Classic toy for budding engineers / FRI 1-23-26 / A little possessive, perhaps? / Commercial preceder of Geo / Micromobility option / How to look at your hot fudge sundae / Text insert for a flash-forward film scene / ___ Mountain (ski area in Killington, Vt.) / Like kyawthuite among gems / It is "Making the complicated simple, awesomely simple," per Charles Mingus

Constructor: Joyce Keller

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Micromobility (35A: Micromobility option => E-SCOOTER) —

The term micromobility refers to a category of small, lightweight vehicles designed for short-distance travel in urban areas and operated by their users. Micromobility encompasses a wide range of transport options, including bicycles, velomobiles, e-bikes, cargo bikes, electric scooters, electric skateboards, shared bicycle fleets, and electric pedal-assisted (pedelec) bicycles. Motorized micromobility vehicles are also known as personal transporters.

Initial definitions set the primary condition for inclusion in the category of micromobility to be a gross vehicle weight of less than 500 kilograms (1,100 lb). However, according to a standard of the SAE International in 2018 the definition has evolved to exclude devices with internal combustion engines and those with top speeds above 45 kilometres per hour (28 mph).

The term micromobility was allegedly coined by Horace Dediu in 2017. However, references to the term on the internet can be found as early as 2010. (wikipedia)

• • •

This one went from high to low real fast. I feel like, if you've been reading me for any length of time, you will know exactly what "high" and even more exactly "low" I'm talking about. I hammered in a few of the short answers in the NW and then looked at the letter combos on the long Acrosses (incl. "LESB-") and knew I had LESBIAN on my hands. "What are they gonna do with the LESBIAN today?" I wondered. What they did was take her to the bar (yay!) by way of a really inventive and clever clue (17A: She's out there!). The "!" tells you that the clue is meant to be taken extremely, even absurdly literally—literally in a way that changes the apparent surface meaning. We often get "!" at the ends of clues containing "it" ([Step on it!] for STAIR, [Beat it!] for DRUM, etc.), but today the mystery word isn't "it" but "there"—is she "out there" because she's wacky, because she's on the loose, because she's literally in your backyard? No. She's "out (as in openly gay) there." She's out where? She's out at the LESBIAN BAR. I like when U.S. crosswords incorporate little cryptic cluing elements like this. I don't think much of "OH, PUH-LEASE" (seen it before, in various spellings, with and without the "OH," kind of a yawner), but LESBIAN BAR was great, both as an answer and as a clue. 

["Enjoy your death trap, ladies!"]

But then ... then ... [sigh] then I saw I was dealing with a Down answer that started "ASAT-." Nothing starts "ASAT-." Nothing good anyway. There was no way that this was going to be anything but an "AS A ___" answer, and "AS A" answers, as a rule, are awful. Contrived. Grimace-causing. AS A RULE may be the only one I can actually tolerate. Everything else just feels like you grabbed a random snatch of conversation out of the ether and threw it down in the grid. AS A TREAT is no exception. And the clue ... 8D: How to look at your hot fudge sundae... ugh. How else are you going to look at it? AS A PUNISHMENT? How to look at my hot fudge sundae? HUNGRILY? LUSTFULLY? I did not know there were prescribed ways to look at a hot fudge sundae. The clue wording is just bizarre. Why not just use a clue like [For fun]? Won't make AS A TREAT any better as an answer, but at least you don't call attention to it with the bizarre premise of someone making googly-eyes at ice cream. I might EAT A SANDWICH AS A TREAT, but I would never put any combination of those words in my grid.

["You're thinking up your white lies / You're putting on your BEDROOM EYES"]

Things got better again, though. Real nice descent on the west side, from "THIS ONE'S ON ME" (5D: "I'll take the blame") to (later in the evening, perhaps) BEDROOM EYES (22D: Longing look). The other marquee answers aren't terribly exciting, but they're solid, and the grid stays mostly clean. *Mostly*—TGI is an abomination on its own and I can't believe it's still allowed in the grid. Just because one restaurant saw fit to turn the "F" in TGIF into a full word and thus separate it from the "TGI" doesn't mean any of us should ever accept "TGI" as a standalone thing. I demand that you delete "TGI" from your wordlists immediately, until such time as it becomes a common texting initialism ("too gross, ick!"? "that's [a] good idea!"?) or a mononymous singer's name ("it's pronounced 'Tiggy!'"). I don't much care for YER, either, but at least that's got kind of a cute clue (9D: A little possessive, perhaps?).

No real difficulty today, though. I don't need Fridays to be grueling, but a little more resistance, esp. if it comes in the form of clever clues, would be nice. The only real trouble spots for me today were BEENE (specifically that second "E," which I always think is going to be an "A") (25A: Designer Geoffrey), the first two letters of STARE (I thought it might be GLARE) (27D: Long look), and PICO Mountain, which I've simply never heard of (16A: ___ Mountain (ski area in Killington, Vt.)).

Bullets:

• 23A: Like kyawthuite among gems (RAREST) — probably should've made "kyawthuite" my Word of the Day today, but since I'm unlikely to see it again for the rest of my life (just as I avoided seeing it for the entirety of my life before today), I decided to go with a more everyday term—or, rather, a term that describes a more everyday phenomenon ("micromobility"). Weird obsession with minerals in today's puzzle—this answer came just a few clues before another comparative mineralogical clue: 28A: Like quartzite vis-à-vis quartz (HARDER).
• 49A: It is "Making the complicated simple, awesomely simple," per Charles Mingus (CREATIVITY) — not normally a fan of these quotation clues, and honestly I didn't even see this clue when I was solving (I could just tell the answer was CREATIVITY and filled it in). But as crossword clue quotes go, I like this one, mainly because it comes from a jazz great and sounds like something a human being would actually say. I like the colloquial addition of "awesomely simple." I can actually hear a voice there.

• 52A: Text insert for a flash-forward film scene (YEARS LATER...) — a nice, specific, vivid way of handling this phrase. I wish I could find a specific instance of this "text insert" actually being used in a film (or a tv show), but I'm having trouble getting the movie 28 Years Later out of my search results.

• 50D: Late actor Kilmer (VAL) — this clue bums me out. Kilmer played so many memorable roles, but all this clue tells you about him is that he's dead. Top Gun! Heat! My favorite VAL Kilmer movie is always going to be Real Genius, both because I watched it over and over as a kid, and because it was filmed almost entirely on the campus of Pomona College, where I ended up going to school (just two years after the movie came out). Real Genius—the first movie to end with the Tears for Fears song "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" (Marty Supreme might've done it better, but Real Genius did it first). 

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Sits legs akimbo, pejoratively / FRI 11-21-25 / Japanese ogre / "Fellow traveler," in Russian / Anne's best friend in "Anne of Green Gables" / Popular perfume named after a singing star / Shakespearean "Hush!" / Juana ___ de la Cruz, classic Mexican writer known as "The Tenth Muse" / Symbol of fertility in ancient Egypt / Certain marketing deluge / Hits up online in a way / Sydney Adamu portrayer on "The Bear"

Constructor: Joyce Keller

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: ONI (54D: Japanese ogre) —

An oni (鬼おに) (/ˈoʊniː/ OH-nee) is a kind of yōkai, demon, orc, ogre, or troll in Japanese folklore. They are believed to live in caves or deep in the mountains or in hell. Oni are known for their superhuman strength and have been associated with powers like thunder and lightning, along with their evil nature manifesting in their propensity for murder and cannibalism. They are typically portrayed as hulking figures with one or more horns growing out of their heads, massive teeth, and occasionally a third eye in the center of the forehead. They are typically depicted with red, blue, black, or yellow colored skin, wearing loincloths of tiger pelt, and carrying iron kanabō clubs. They also have three to six digits on each hand and foot tipped with claw-like nails. Oni are able to change their looks to fool their victims into trusting them. Oni can be male or female, but have been predominantly male throughout history. Female oni are sometimes referred to by the name Yamauba. When in disguise, oni are capable of appearing as a man or woman, regardless of their gender. As monstrous as oni are, they have been linked to bringing good fortune and wealth. [...] They are popular characters in Japanese art, literature, and theater and appear as stock villains in the well-known fairytales of Momotarō (Peach Boy), Issun-bōshi, and Kobutori Jīsan. Although oni have been described as frightening creatures, they have become tamer in modern culture as people tell less frightening stories about them like Oni Mask and Red Oni Who Cried.(wikipedia)

• • •

[52A: Insomniac's aid]

This had a decent amount of whoosh, but I wouldn't call it HEART-STOPPING. It started soft, with a name I haven't thought about for years—except when her first name shows up in crosswords (LEA MICHELE)—sitting on top of a slang term that is no longer novel and that I also haven't thought about for years (MANSPREADS) (17A: Sits legs akimbo, pejoratively). But then I came out of that corner with a dramatic zing-zing, as ROCKET SCIENCE shot across the grid in one direction and CHEAT SHEET barreled across it in the other—a moment so nice I took a picture to commemorate the occasion:

After that moment, though, things got somewhat less exciting again. I love the adjectival COME-HITHER (as in a "COME-HITHER look" or "glance" or "stare"), and HEART-STOPPING, while not a descriptor of this puzzle as a whole, is a good answer in its own right. But the other longer answers weren't as interesting, for various reasons, and there was a certain name-iness (and crossing name-iness at that) that was less than enjoyable. All the names are women's names, which is interesting, but still, a glut of names is a glut of names. DIANA crossing INES was a particular non-favorite (44D: Anne's best friend in "Anne of Green Gables" / 55A: Juana ___ de la Cruz, classic Mexican writer known as "The Tenth Muse"). Also, putting one long full celebrity name in a puzzle is fine. Two is pushing it. In fact, AYO EDEBIRI is pushing it in many respects (11D: Sydney Adamu portrayer on "The Bear"). I like her work and don't dislike seeing her name, but y'all are really flooding the zone with her name and name parts and you should really ease up because I've never seen someone's name go from "ooh, fresh!" to "really, her again?" so fast. There have been six AYOs, all of them this year, and, astonishingly, three (3!) full-name appearances for AYO EDEBIRI (again, all this year). A ten-letter proper noun appearing 3x in a year (in six months, actually!) is an unheard of thing. I haven't done the research here, as I can't immediately figure out how to search xwordinfo for answers by length and then sort by frequency and year, but ... it took EMMA STONE (one letter shorter, with more common letters) nine years to get to her fourth all-time full-name appearance; despite her multiple Oscars, including one just last year, we haven't seen her in three and a half years. And that's fine! That's as it should be. Even very famous people should not have their names in the puzzle all the damn time. Respect AYO EDEBIRI by giving her some time off, is what I am saying.

Not sure why HOLE-IN-ONE is fine but HOLES-IN-ONE feels awk. It's a legitimate plural, I just don't like golf in the first place and the "attorneys general" pluralizing of it all doesn't help. I don't really buy "HERE'S WHY..." as a standalone phrase (35D: Lead-in to clarification). Can't say it's not original, but I had "HERE'S HOW..." which also doesn't feel great but feels stronger and more in-the-language (maybe from advertising?) than "HERE'S WHY..." Speaking of advertising and adspeak (one of my least favorite crossword things) ... actually let's not speak about E-BLAST (41D: Certain marketing deluge). The less said the better. As for FIRESTARTER, here is a rare case where I wish the puzzle had opted for the proper noun cluing. [Barbecuer's aid], meh—FIRESTARTER is a Stephen King novel-turned-1980s Drew Barrymore movie. It's been clued that way three of its four earlier appearances, but that's fine. I enjoy remembering 80s movies more than I enjoy thinking about something that literally starts a fire.

Bullets:

• 21A: Settled down (ATREST) — that's AT [space] REST. Hardest thing for me to parse in the whole dang grid. I wanted ALIT and obviously that wouldn't fit and so I just filled the answer from crosses. It took way more crosses than it should have to realize the answer was two words.
• 39D: "Fellow traveler," in Russian (SPUTNIK) — this puzzle was so easy that I didn't even see two clues with interesting bits of trivia in them: this one and the clue on BEES (50D: They have five eyes and communicate by dancing).
• 9D: It may bring out the kid in you (CESAREAN) — never loved the cutesiness of this particular clue (I say "never" because I've seen this exact clue before). Yes, a C-section will get the child out of your uterus, it's true. The wordplay is not unclever. I guess I just find the whimsy unfit for the topic.
• 20A: Symbol of fertility in ancient Egypt (TOAD) — speaking of interesting bits of trivia. TOAD would not have been on my guess list.
• 23A: Shakespearean "Hush!" ("SOFT!") — the "Shakespearean" part had me looking for something British and/or olde-tymey. I had the "F" and thought, "... TOFF? Is that a thing?" before remembering the line, "But SOFT, what light through yonder window breaks? etc." 

• 36A: Popular perfume named after a singing star (RIRI) — Rihanna. Back-to-back days for RIRI.
• 33D: Find fault with, informally (DING) — I wanted DISS. Actually, I wanted DIS and thought maybe DISS was going to be an alt-spelling.
• 4D: Hits up online, in a way (IMS) — do people still "IM" each other? It's not just called "texting?" IM apps are exceedingly popular, but my question is more about the verb. "I'll IM you!" Really? You "text" or "message" someone. Gonna ask my students about this one.

[probably not a great idea to I.M. every woman]

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

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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