Video game franchise featuring 100+ species of dinosaurs / THU 5-7-26 / Counterparts to calls, in stock lingo / One's appearance after a difficult journey, say / One providing timely delivery? / Plant used to make a Mexican beverage called "pulque" / Arctic seabird nicknamed "aerial pirate"

Constructor: John Guzzetta and Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: -LESS — clues are familiar phrases that are missing a letter string that forms a word; answers are cryptic descriptions of those clues. So, e.g. 17A: is CARELESS MISTAKE because its clue, [BAD ___ER MOVE], is a "mistake" (BAD CAREER MOVE) minus the "care" part: 

Theme answers:

• "CARE"-LESS MISTAKE (17A: BAD __ER MOVE) ("bad career move" w/o "care")
• "WIN"-LESS SEASON (27A: ___TER) ("winter" w/o "win")
• "AGE"-LESS BEAUTY (44A: P___ANT QUEEN) ("pageant queen" w/o "age")
• "END"-LESS STRUGGLE (56A: ___EAVOR) ("endeavor" w/o "end")

Word of the Day: ARK (48A: Video game franchise featuring 100+ species of dinosaurs) —

Ark: Survival Evolved (stylized as ARK) is a 2017 action-adventure survival video game developed by Studio Wildcard. In the game, players must survive being stranded on one of several maps filled with roaming dinosaurs, fictional fantasy monsters, and other prehistoric animals, natural hazards, and potentially hostile human players.

The game is played from either a third-person or first-person perspective and its open world is navigated by foot or by riding a prehistoric animal. Players can use firearms and improvised weapons to defend against hostile humans and creatures, with the ability to build bases as a defence on the ground and on some creatures. The game has both single-player and multiplayer options. Multiplayer allows the option to form tribes of players in a server. The max number of tribe mates varies from each server. In this mode, all tamed dinosaurs and building structures are usually shared between the members. There is a PvE mode where players cannot fight each other unless a specific war event agreed upon by both parties is triggered. [...] 

Ark: Survival Evolved received generally mixed reviews, with criticism for its level of difficulty, repetitive gameplay design, and "bloated" level of content. The initial Nintendo Switch version was panned for its graphics and performance issues. Several expansions to the game have been released as downloadable content. (wikipedia)

• • •

Once again, I start a 2026 NYTXW puzzle and I immediately hit things like KIR and EVEL and wonder what kind of crosswordese time warp I've fallen into. ARLO ALIG SAHIB ECO ELLIE ESTA ESTES etc. etc. etc. I don't expect short fill to be exciting, and I do expect a clunker or two, but lately there seems like there's been a distinct carelessness with the short fill, as if constructors are just taking the first options their constructing software is giving them without bothering to see if maybe, with a little polish, the grid could look ... better. Or at least feel somewhat less creaky. So even before I hit the theme today, I was disappointed in this one. The theme itself is clever—one of those two-way cryptic dealies that's hard to explain, where the answer is more like the clue and vice versa. The clue tells you how to read the answer ... but once you figure out the gimmick, and you know you're (always) dealing with -LESS phrases up front, you can (probably) get to the answer from the clue alone. I never did. Took a while to discover what the gimmick was—needed most of the crosses in CARELESS MISTAKE, in part because I couldn't make anything out of [BAD ___ER MOVE] ("Badger move?" "Badfinger move?")—and after WINLESS SEASON told me they were all going to be -LESS phrases, I got the remaining two themers just from crosses and then inferring that there was a -LESS word at the beginning. Got BEAUTY and inferred AGELESS. Got STRUGGLE (actually just -GGLE) and inferred ENDLESS STRUGGLE. So the gimmick was kinda hard to pick up, but once you do, the puzzle becomes very easy to close out. 

The only real non-theme issues were some proper nouns I'd never heard of. I'm supposed to know all 435 congresspeople in the House of Representatives?? I know, like, two. AOC and my own rep, whose name, honestly, at this very second, I am forgetting. White guy, seems nice, shrug. I probably do know more than that (I do know the speaker's name, for instance), but JAMIE Raskin, no, I do not know that. Also if the three-letter "video game franchise" is not GTA (Grand Theft Auto) then there is no way in hell I will know it. ARK? LOL, given the clue (48A: Video game franchise featuring 100+ species of dinosaurs) I thought it was going to be some awful, ahistorical, and possibly Creationist game about how Noah lived in the time of dinosaurs or something. That answer was the last thing I filled in because there was no intuitive connection between the clue and the answer. Luckily for me, every cross was solid. The long Downs were solid today. I particularly loved SORRY SIGHT, though I did not love the clue (30D: One's appearance after a difficult journey, say). It's clunky and it takes all the colloquial energy out of the phrase. Gotta be a better way. Also, I'm not sure why a STAGE ACTOR's "delivery" should be more "timely" than any other kind of actor's delivery. Nothing in the clue seems "stage"-specific (29D: One providing timely delivery?), so I didn't like that clue either. MARROW BONE and MUSCLE CARS are just fine ... but I don't think the longer answer set quite offsets the gunky short fill. Doubly depressing that the fill is so gunky even after the puzzle has inserted a bunch of cheater squares (the black squares above ETS and below TOE, and then after MUG and before WAR)*. Those squares (which do not add to the overall answer count) are supposed to make the grid easier to fill for the constructor. But if EVEL is still in there sipping in KIR, I'm not sure the cheaters are working well enough. 

[I probably thought this song was cheesy as a kid but now it sounds Perfect]
Bullets:

• 13A: Plant used to make a Mexican beverage  called "pulque" (AGAVE) — "plant" and "Mexican beverage" are all you need here, AGAVE being the basis for other, more familiar Mexican beverages (tequila, mezcal). AGAVE shows up a lot in xwords—it's got that perfect five-letter VCVCV pattern that works so well in grids (OBAMA, ILANA, EDEMA, AROMA, etc.). Probably should've made "pulque" my word of the day, but the stupid video game got in the way. Pulque "is an alcoholic beverage made from the fermented sap of the maguey (agave) plant. It is traditional in central Mexico, where it has been produced for millennia. It has the color of milk, a rather viscous consistency and a sour yeast-like taste." (wikipedia)

• 46D: ___ Triangle (coastal section of Pennsylvania) (ERIE) — whoa, do ships disappear from there? Did Leonard Nimoy do an episode of In Search of... about the ERIE Triangle, the way I know he did about the Bermuda Triangle? Sadly, the answer is much more mundane. The "triangle" is literally just a triangle-shaped piece of land that connects PA to Lake ERIE, giving the state a freshwater port it wouldn't otherwise have.

[we used to have nice things... RIP Leonard Nimoy and his perfect voiceover voice]

• 40D: Counterparts to calls, in stock lingo (PUTS) — oh boy ... stock lingo ... everyone's favorite. Why clue a normal word normally when you can make it ... stock lingo ... ? 
• 9A: One who measures meter by the feet? (POET) — on the last day of classes, some of my British Literature students gave me a book they'd made filled with all the craziest things I'd (apparently!) said in class over the course of the semester. It was very sweet, if mildly humiliating. There's a lot in there about feet.

[I have no recollection of any of this, your honor]

• 39D: Arctic seabird nicknamed "aerial pirate" (SKUA) — first of all that's a terrible nickname. When you already have a cool name like SKUA! why would anyone bother with the syllabically excessive and boringly descriptive "aerial pirate"? Second of all, I want to point out that although SKUA is technically crosswordese (a bird I wouldn't have known existed were it not for crosswords), it is the official policy of this blog that all birds are given passes and will not be counted toward any puzzle's crosswordese load. Yes, that includes EMU, as well as extinct birds like MOA and DODO. All birds welcome, any time, in any amount. Yes, even TITS, of course TITS, why not? Haven't seen a TUI since '04, why not bring that one back? So many birds out there waiting for a crossword home. Constructors of the world, expand your ornithological range!

[TUI!!]

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

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*Technically, there are two more cheater squares, after ARK and before INN, but they're less conspicuous and they're propping up the colorful longer Downs, so I'm not mad about them)  

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Answer to the riddle ending "How many are going to St. Ives?" / WED 3-11-26 / Language in which "computer" is made up of the characters for "electric" and "brain" / Vaudeville show

Constructor: John Guzzetta

Relative difficulty: Easy (~8 minutes)

THEME: SERENDIPITY — Happy chance, as illustrated by the four invention stories at 17-, 24-, 36- and 44-Across

Theme answers:

• [In 1968, Spencer Silver at 3M Corporation was attempting to develop a superstrong adhesive ...] for POST IT NOTES
• [In 1928, Alexander Fleming at St. Mary's Hospital in London found mold in his cultures of staphylococcus bacteria ...] for PENICILLIN
• [In 1945, Percy Spencer at the Raytheon Manufacturing Company noticed the chocolate bar in his pocket had melted close to a magnetron ...] for MICROWAVE OVEN
• [In 1943, James Wright at General Electric was attempting to develop synthetic rubber for the war effort ...] for SILLY PUTTY

Word of the Day: CONTE (Old French tale) —

Conte is a literary genre of tales, often short, characterized by fantasy or wit. They were popular in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries until the genre became merged with the short story in the nineteenth century. Distinguishing contes from other literary genres is notoriously difficult due to the various meanings of the French term conte that span folktales, fairy tales, short stories, oral tales, and fables. [Wiki]

• • •

Hey friends! I'm glad to see you all for an off-schedule Malaika MWednesday. I solved this puzzle while listening to orchestral covers of pop songs from Bridgerton. I love these and could listen all day long. 

I'm really curious to see what y'all think of this puzzle. This type of theme, where there's simply a list of words with zero wordplay or raison d'etre, is not my favorite. In fact, I taught a class on creating crossword puzzles on Sunday and emphasized that this type of theme would not be successful if they're trying to get published. Oops!! Sorry guys. Go ahead and make your lists!! 

Part of the lackluster feel to me is that the revealer is just a random entry. It could have been anything, right?? It could have been "good luck" or "pure chance," or "happy accident." There's nothing especially fitting about the word SERENDIPITY (it doesn't even have anything to do with inventions) except that it had the right number of letters to fit symmetrically in the grid, so it doesn't feel like a fun reveal. Similarly, I haven't heard someone say MICROWAVE OVEN in like a decade (it's just "microwave" in my circle) which makes it feel like they just needed a correct number of letters with that phrase as well.

Another thing that I found odd is the phrasing of the clues. I associate that styling, with the italics and the ellipses at the end, with a wacky clue / entry combo, and was expecting that, and then very surprised to not see it materialize. At the very least, I would (grammatically) assume that an ellipsis indicates a partial sentence. So I'd think that the clue for (e.g.) "chocolate chip cookies" would be: In the 1930s, Ruth Wakefield played around with a recipe and invented... and then the entry would fill in the blank. (That's one of my favorite invention stories btw, tragically left out of this puzzle.) I really don't get why the ellipses or the italics are there at all! I would have phrased, e.g, the first clue as just: [In 1968, Spencer Silver's experiments with superstrong adhesive resulted in this common office supplies]

The fill was nice and smooth, and I liked seeing DETECTIVE, and CHINESE with that clue, but overall, the puzzle felt very meh. Really curious to see if you guys felt the same way. I am also open to the possibility that I have a bad attitude right now because I learned the hard way last week that I have an allergy to PENICILLIN. It was harrowing. 

Benoit Blanc!! Probably my favorite DETECTIVE right now

What else? I used to always point out when a theme only involved white men. I guess I can do that here. But it seems like the people who care about that notice it on their own, and the people who don't care roll their eyes when I rant about it. *shrug*

Bullets:

• [Alternative to fries, maybe] for SLAW — I had "tots" here for ages. I genuinely cannot imagine a situation where you offered a choice between fries and slaw. Fries or a salad?? Absolutely! Or if you are at a barbecue place getting a plate, I guess you can choose your sides and both are options. But you should absolutely be allotted more than one side, and slaw and fries simply do not occupy the same conceptual space while planning out a plate.
• [Answer to the riddle ending "How many are going to St. Ives?"] for ONE — Can one of y'all explain this to me please
• [Many first-time smartphone owners] for TEENS — Had a hilariously un-self-aware moment when I angrily thought "I can't believe teens have smartphones!" and then remembered that I got mine at age sixteen. Oops!! I probably shouldn't have had it though!! And now there are kiddos getting them at age thirteen. Definitely bad vibes.

xoxo Malaika

Three points of self-promotion, which I'll bury after the signature:

1) I constructed a themeless puzzle for the Boswords spring league! The league has already started (Rex has a link to it below) so I'm not sure if you can still register. But if you already have, keep an eye out for my puzzle! I can't say when it's coming, alas-- it's a surprise!

2) I will be at Crossword Con and at ACPT on April 10, and I hope you come say hi to me if you see me! As far as I know, I am the tallest woman to construct a NYT crossword, so I should be easy to spot. (If that's wrong, please tell me.)

3) Back in December, I published a cute little book of easy crosswords. I probably told y'all about this when it came out, but I'm newly excited because my friend sent me a picture today of someone solving on the train!! So exciting.

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Widespread rumors, in a portmanteau / SAT 3-9-24 / MacGyvering / "Thanks a lot!," in intentionally butchered French / Remington of 1980s TV / Ananda Mahidol became its king at the age of 9, while living in Switzerland / Branch of causality that comes from the Greek for "study of the end" / Gem used in intaglio / They are felt every April

Constructor: John Guzzetta

Relative difficulty: Medium (potentially skewing harder)

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: intaglio (64A: Gem used in intaglio = ONYX) —

1

a

: an engraving or incised figure in stone or other hard material depressed below the surface so that an impression from the design yields an image in relief

b

: the art or process of executing intaglios

c

: printing (as in die stamping and gravure) done from a plate in which the image is sunk below the surface

2

: something (such as a gem) carved in intaglio (merriam-webster.com)

• • •

This one has a lot of ... trying to think of a neutral term here ... energy? It's very lively. It's trying very hard to be lively. I think I half-enjoyed the liveliness. In fact, I might've more-than-half-enjoyed it, but some of the non-liveliness really brought me down. The proper nouns in this thing were obscure (to me), so that over and over (that is, three times, for sure) I got clues that were essentially "man's name" or "woman's name." Some TV actor, OK, once per puzzle, maybe, but today, twice!? (45A: Actor Fitch of "This Is Us" / 56D: Actress Kirke of "Mozart in the Jungle"), and then a Mr. Olympia to BOOT (!?!?). Do people really keep track of the Mr. Olympias? I mean, besides participants in the contest itself, and (presumably) avid bodybuilders? RONNIE? (4D: ___ Coleman, eight-time Mr. Olympia). Really could've used a "presidential nickname" there or something. Anyway, name, name, name, from TV show I don't watch, TV show I don't watch, competition I know nothing about. Again, I expect to get hit with one or two of these in a puzzle, but by the third I was weary. Thank god I knew AUGIE March cold, and my condolences to those who didn't. If that name seemed obscure to you, I get it, and I sympathize, but at least Saul Bellow won the dang Nobel Prize—that alone makes him far more crossworthy than non-Arnold Mr. Olympias and TV actors of probably considerable talent, but no great fame (TO DATE). OK I just discovered that NILES Fitch is a. adorable b. younger than my daughter, so I'm pro-NILES Fitch now. But while I was solving—not so much.

[NILES Fitch]

But back to the puzzle's weird high energy. Really felt like the puzzle was out here just shouting random made-up terms, or slang terms, or whatever popped into its head. "INFODEMIC!" (13A: Widespread rumors, in a portmanteau) Uh, that's ... not a thing. "NEW NORMAL!" (16A: Post-crisis baseline) Ooh, yeah, I like that, but maybe go back to normal words now? "STRIPY!" What!? I said "normal." Do you even spell STRIPY like th-? "MERCY BUCKETS!" (6D: "Thanks a lot!," in intentionally butchered French) OMG slow down ... Not sure how I feel about dopey fake Fr- "LIGHTEN UP!" You lighten up. "DIGITAL DETOX!" Yeah OK, good, now you're back on the right tr- "TAX BITES!" Huh. So not SEX BITES, then? Good to know, I thought April Fools' was getting a little kinky there. Don't love this in the plural, but- "TELEOLOGY!" (33D: Branch of causality that comes from the Greek for "study of the end") Alright, now you're speaking my language, but I don't know if it's gonna be everyone's lang- "AUGIE!" Well, yes, see my TELEOLOGY comment, above. {End scene}.

I think [MacGyvering] was my favorite part of the puzzle. I use that term all the time. Sometimes when I'm teaching. Then I have to explain the '80s to kids who have no memories of anything before the Obama Era. It's awkward. But actually "MacGyvering" seems to be a concept that has transcended its TV origins. And since I already had the "JU-" in place when I looked at the clue, whoooosh, JURY-RIGGING! The puzzle had its other colorful, whooshy moments. "MERCY BUCKETS" is godawful as a phrase, please don't say it, ever ... but as a crossword answer, I have to give it points for originality. And DIGITAL DETOX is very good, very current, even if I could not for the life of me remember the word that was supposed to follow DIGITAL ("Diet? ... Fasting? ... Time out? ...") I kinda sorta knew it alliterated, and that still didn't help. But when I got DETOX, I recognized its validity right away. Speaking of validity—you may be wondering how FIT is a valid answer for 33A: Meet. Yeah, I thought they were verbs too. But they're not.* They're adjectives, and both mean (roughly) "proper" or "appropriate." Merriam-webster.com defines "meet" (in this sense) as "precisely adapted to a particular situation, need, or circumstance : very proper." So the answer is FIT as in "fitting." That meaning of "Meet" is borderline archaic. In fact, Merriam-Webster has it as "archaic & dialectical British," so if you didn't know it, don't feel too bad. 

Really hate the pithy-saying-type clue, since they never compute for me until I've got nearly every cross, and today... we get two! Descartes on DOUBT (50D: "The origin of wisdom," per René Descartes) and Denis Leary on COMEDY (19A: "The ultimate form of free speech," to Denis Leary). I don't know why it's "per" René Descartes but "to" Denis Leary. Is Leary not fancy enough for a "per?" Also, why are we being told it's René Descartes, specifically? Is there some other Descartes? Jimmy Descartes? Typically, Descartes is a one-name dude. If you don't know him as Descartes, then "René" is not gonna help you.

Bullet points:

• 52D: Asparagus, essentially (STEMS) — went with SPEAR here at first, which I'm just gonna assume was a common error
• 27D: Concupiscent one (EROS) — I didn't know EROS himself was "concupiscent" (he's often depicted as a mischievous child or adolescent boy). I thought he just made ... you ... that way (i.e. horny) ("concupiscence" is strong desire, esp. sexual desire)
• 2D: Reluctant to join? (INERT) — ah, chemistry jokes, who doesn't love those!? (besides me). Per wikipedia: "The noble gases (helium, neon, argon, krypton, xenon and radon) were previously known as 'inert gases' because of their perceived lack of participation in any chemical reactions. "
• 10D: Pay for a crime, say (SERVE TIME) — an ordinary phrase, but for some reason I could not come up with the first word. Had TIME and after "DO TIME" I was out of ideas. SERVE TIME is rather formal. But it's not wrong.

OK, I GOTTA RUN. Coffee and cats are calling. This one was more good than bad. Irksome in parts, but enjoyable overall. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

*a commenter suggested that “Meet” and FIT could in fact be seen as verbs, in the sense of “meeting/fitting the criteria.” This is probably how most people will interpret the clue. Seems valid. 

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Adoration of the Kardashians / SAT 8-5-23 / One aboard the Tiangong space station / Iranian sage who inspired Nietzsche / Eatery with a 1950s vibe say / Giraffe tallest land mammal on earth

Constructor: John Guzzetta

Relative difficulty: Extremely Easy except for two answers, one in particular

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: TAIKONAUT (47A: One aboard the Tiangong space station) —

The name used in the west for a Chinese astronaut. It comes from the Chinese word ‘taikong’ meaning space or cosmos. The official Chinese name is yuhangyuan, meaning ‘travellers of the Universe’. (Oxford Reference)

• • •

Strange puzzle—Tuesday-level difficult, but with two Saturday-plus-level difficulty answers conspicuously plunked down inside it. Absolutely jarring to have such stark disparity between just two words and the rest of the grid. The puzzle basically starts with HAGIOLATRY and ends with TAIKONAUT and it's hard to remember anything else that happened along the way (though I remember the journey being enjoyable, however quick). I think I found HAGIOLATRY more disturbing / bizarre ... in fact, I know I did. TAIKONAUT I just flat-out didn't know, so it was frustrating, the way ignorance is frustrating, but it didn't annoy me the way HAGIOLATRY did. With HAGIOLATRY, I knew the word parts just fine. HAGIO- means "saint," though, so I was very (very) confused as to what the Kardashians had to do with any of it (15A: Adoration of the Kardashians, e.g.). "Hagiographies" are saints' lives (I had to read a bunch of them in grad school). The -LATRY part has to do with fervency of worship (think "zealotry" or "idolatry"). So HAGIOLATRY ... means worshipping saints? And ... the Kardashians are there ... somehow? Well, I looked it up, and, sigh, it appears that HAGIOLATRY somehow also means "undue veneration of a famous person." News to me, never heard it. Bizarre. Try using it in conversation and see if anyone has any idea what you're talking about. But at least I knew the word parts, and that got me through. After that, almost no resistance from the puzzle until TAIKONAUT, where I had ASTRONAUT, then, after that "T" from STAT (36D: "Right away!"), I had TERRANAUT (LOL I think I learned that from some mid-century sci-fi in my vintage paperback collection) (The Terranauts is also a recentish T.C. Boyle novel). After that, I just gave up and let the crosses do all the work, with the "K" in KAPPA doing the final, frightening work ("please be right please be right please be right"). Nothing else really happened in this puzzle, except this one glorious drop to the bottom of the grid:

I suspected, from the moment they just handed me SHIVA (1D: Jewish mourning period), that this one was gonna skew Easy, and then I went SHIVA ADDLE OGLED DOG ERA IRA VEES IDLEGOSSIP with almost no hesitation, and those initial suspicions were confirmed. 

Hardly anything unfamiliar in the grid, everything clued simply ... except for The Aforementioned Two. So that was my only truly Saturday experience: two answers. Like I said, at least the rest of the grid was (largely) clean and crisp and well put-together. Just wish it had been a little more memorable, and a little thornier.

[Crossword content! I repeat, crossword content! Unexpected!]

No idea who LILA Kedrova is (38D: ___ Kedrova, Oscar-winning actress for "Zorba the Greek"). The only LILA I know is LILA Crane, Marion's sister in "Psycho" (played by Vera Miles) (how is she not listed among the fictional LILAs on the "LILA" wikipedia page!? Somebody fix that!). That clue was Saturday-level, I guess, though somehow "random woman's name" is the kind of thing I fight through all the time, and so didn't trouble me nearly as much as The Aforementioned Two. The highlight of the grid was "IT'S A FREE COUNTRY"—a great 15-letter colloquial expressions, and (as I say) a thrilling whoosh-whoosh plummeting ride to the bottom of the grid. All the longer answers in this one are strong. SKYBOX SEAT felt a little iffy to me at first. SKYBOX, definitely a thing, SKYBOX SEAT ... I mean, yes, there are seats there, but the phrase doesn't exactly snap. I think of Skyboxes more as enclosed suites that you have to be invited to, or completely rent out. I dunno. Something just feels a little wobbly. But SKYBOX SEATs definitely exist, so probably not as wobbly as it sounds to my specific ears. Worse for me was ALPHA NERDS, a phrase I don't think exists at all, and especially not as clued (29D: Group members who are the most tech-savvy). "Tech-savvy" is not not not not "nerdy." Not! Stop it. Geeky, maybe. Maybe. But nerds ... OK, nerds are (conventionally) hardcore math/science types, and even when "nerd" is applied to other realms, "nerd" should always refer to people who are absolutely unfashionably into the things they're into. The mainstreaming of that word to mean any kind of enthusiast, including tech bros ... bah. No.

[Vera Miles as LILA Crane in "Psycho"]

SWORDSMITH was probably the hardest answer to get at besides The Aforementioned Two, primarily because of that "?" clue (1A: Expert with a temper?), but at least "temper" gave me some idea that it would have to do with metal somehow, and at least SWORDSMITH is a thing I've actually heard of, so that was just regular themeless stuff. Not sure how well "a temper" works with the answer (I think of "temper"as exclusively a verb), but it's a "?" clue, so ... horseshoes, hand grenades, close enough. We've had both "EID Mubarak" and DAX Shepard recently, so even if the latter might've given me trouble at some point in my solving career, no trouble today. I had to work backward to ZOROASTER from the more familiar "Zoroastrian," but that wasn't too hard (32D: Iranian sage who inspired Nietzsche). Wrapped things up in that corner with TERP, URSA, STU, all Monday-level short stuff. Would love the difficulty of a Saturday to be more ... even and consistently spread out, but I didn't find this one unpleasant at all. A few strong entries, a couple of "??????"s ... I learned something, I laughed, I cried, I thought about nerds ... it was an experience. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. So the MASAI giraffe is the "tallest land mammal on earth"???? Are there land mammals ... somewhere else? Maybe the TAIKONAUTs will find out!

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ATV with four tires / MON 1-24-22 / UN agency awarded the 1969 Nobel Peace Prize / Fall bloom that resembles a daisy / One of two royal sleeping options / Mate for Hagar the Horrible / Calvin's tiger companion in the comics

Constructor: John Guzzetta

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: STARTING QB (59A: Key member of a football team, in brief ... or a feature of 16-, 29-, 35- and 42-Across) — two-word phrases where the first word starts with a "Q" and the second word starts with a "B":

Theme answers:

• QUICK BREAD (16A: It doesn't need time to rise before baking)
• QUEEN BED (29A: One of two "royal" sleeping options)
• QUILTING BEE (35A: Social crafting event)
• QUAD BIKE (42A: ATV with four tires)

Word of the Day: QUAD BIKE (42A) —

An all-terrain vehicle (ATV), also known as a light utility vehicle (LUV), a quad bike, or simply a quad, as defined by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI); is a vehicle that travels on low-pressure tires, with a seat that is straddled by the operator, along with handlebars for steering control. As the name implies, it is designed to handle a wider variety of terrain than most other vehicles. Although it is a street-legal vehicle in some countries, it is not street-legal within most states, territories and provinces of Australia, the United States or Canada. (wikipedia)

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Extremely straightforward. I guess the "Q" words make it interesting. More interesting than "R" words or "D" words, for example, probably. I don't know if it's because I don't care about football at all anymore or if it's because the theme is so precisely literal, but conceptually this one just felt flat to me. But there's no question about its "working." That is a fine play on the word "starting," and those are all solid "QB" phrases, so there's nothing much to fault. I don't think I've ever heard the term QUAD BIKE before. I thought it was going to be some vehicle unknown to me, but it turns out it's just ... an ATV. Apparently they also come in 3-wheeled varieties, but I can only ever remember seeing the four-wheelers, so what this puzzle is calling a QUAD BIKE is just an ATV to me. Tellingly, QUAD BIKE is folded into the ATV wikipedia entry, offered as a virtual synonym (see the Word of the Day, above). So that was ... odd. But a QUAD BIKE is very much a thing, and even if the term wasn't well known to me, it was easy to get / infer, both from the "four" in the clue and from the theme itself. There's just not a lot to say about this one. The grid is clean enough. The theme works OK. Here it is. It's NFL playoff season, so the puzzle's got timeliness on its side as well. I like HUGGABLE and STAR TURN as answers—very vibrant. I also loved seeing ELVIS Costello (just as I've loved seeing him literally, in concert, five times). Haven't listened to his brand new album yet ("The Boy Named If"), but this oddly touching interview makes it sound really interesting. ELVIS's late career has been remarkably strong. I thought 2018's "Look Now" was one of the best albums he's ever made.

I had a few dumb hiccups, most notably when I wrote in PRRR (?) at 15A: Contented cat's sound (PURR) and ORCS (?!) at 18A: Monster often seen wielding a club (OGRE). "Monster," singular. Not sure how I missed that, but there it is. I also really thought 38A: Created yarn or tales (SPUN) was LIED. If "yarn" didn't mean "implausible story," I wouldn't have fallen into that weird hole. The only fill I really object to today is ILO (International Labour Organization) and OBE (Order of the British Empire), mostly because they are initialisms that positively reek of bygone-itude. They used to be much more common in the "good" old, pre-construction-software days of the 20th and early 21st centuries; I'd never seen either of them before I started solving, and I honestly haven't seen either of them outside of crosswords, that I can recall. But that's just two short answers; nothing else here clanks or clunks very much. It's a very competent Monday puzzle. Not particularly HUGGABLE, but not bad either. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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