"Santa Claus in Camp" artist, 1863 / SAT 7-25-26 / One of a nursery rhyme quintet / Unprofessional letters? / 1980s Chrysler innovation / The so-called "hurricane bird" / Second person seen in "Hamlet" / Ambient sound said to be more soothing than its "white" counterpart / Emmy winner Ann of "The Handmaid's Tale" / Waft fragrant smoke around / Co-founder of the A.C.L.U.'s Women's Rights Project, familiarly / Actor/playwright Davis who wrote "Purlie Victorious"

Constructor: Katie Hoody

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: PINK NOISE (33D: Ambient sound said to be more soothing than its "white" counterpart) —

[sleepfoundation.org] 

Pink noise, 1/f noise, fractional noise or fractal noise is a signal or process with a frequency spectrum such that the power spectral density (power per frequency interval) is inversely proportional to the frequency of the signal. In pink noise, each octave interval (halving or doubling in frequency) carries an equal amount of noise energy.

Pink noise sounds like a waterfall. It is often used to tune loudspeaker systems in professional audio. Pink noise is one of the most commonly observed signals in biological systems.

The name arises from the pink appearance of visible light with this power spectrum. This is in contrast with white noise that has equal intensity per frequency interval. [...]

• • •

[1A: Fashionable spots?]

The themelesses were good again this week. Very good. One of the best late-week 1-2 punches I've seen recently. What I loved about this one was that it felt like a Friday—wide-open grid, lots of flow, marquee answers slashing this way and that—but with the cluing clearly tightened up a notch or two. Every single clue seemed to be trying to mislead me at least slightly. Well, not most of the proper nouns—they seemed to be there to give me mild traction. But the ordinary words and phrases hardly ever seemed to have a straightforward clue. This is my ideal Saturday, actually. It's a Friday+. A simple difficulty augmentation, that's all I want. All the other fun stuff that a good Friday offers should stay the same. Could this puzzle have been harder? Yes. Should it have been? Maybe, but as with yesterday, I thought the puzzle at least cleared the minimal difficulty standards for its day of the week. The only things I outright didn't know were PINK NOISE (33D: Ambient sound said to be more soothing than its "white counterpart") and DOWD (21A: Emmy winner Ann of "The Handmaid's Tale"); the clue helped me infer the former while the crosses took care of the latter. So the difficulty today came entirely from cluing—which is, generally, as it should be. Today, we get two big bursts of colloquial goodness, right across the middle. The first one sent me shooting out of the NW corner and clear across the grid:

The second ("I'M IN THE SAME BOAT") was slower to arrive, but only because I actually didn't look at the clue until I had most of the crosses locked into place. The answer was no less delightful for coming into view more slowly. The rest of the longer fill was strong, or at least solid, but the real joy today came from hacking my way through all the slightly tricky clues. The ones on POLKA DOTS (1A: Fashionable spots?) and GARAGE SALE (17A: What might provide you an opportunity to walk in someone else's shoes?) are obviously trying to mislead you (that's what the "?" on the end of the clues is trying to tell you), but it was the ambiguously-worded clues that were really fun today. [Coach's lack, often] ends up having nothing to do with a coach (human) but instead refers to passenger status on an airplane. The [Second person seen in "Hamlet"] is not a character but pronoun category (THOU). You don't "check a box" by putting a check in a box (as on a survey) but by literally checking (with your eyes) the mailbox (40D: One might check a box for it = MAIL). Etc. Etc. Sometimes I was braced for trickiness that never came, which is another way that a Saturday puzzle can push me off-balance. Like, I thought the "sisters" in 52D: What some sisters become were nuns, but they were just ... sisters (AUNTS). And [Predigital recording devices] had me first thinking of fingers and toes (that kind of "digital"), and then had me wondering what meaning of "recording" I wasn't considering. But no, you record (or "write things down") with PENS, a technology that precedes modern digital (electronic) recording of any kind. Sometimes I saw right through this trickery (the other meaning of "shingles" (and "nails") in the ITCH clue, the other meaning of "lab" in the PET clue). But whether the misdirects were hard or easy, they were entertaining. The puzzle seemed to be trying to give me a good time, and I appreciated it.

I often feel guilty when some obvious bit of crosswordese or other sort of short gimme is the first thing I'm able to get. Like, the NW was crushing me and would've kept crushing me had the combined forces of LEROY, KCAR, OSSIE, and SELA not eventually, finally, given me enough assistance to get over the hump. I was coming up blank on everything else up there, esp. the long stuff. So the crosswordy names were conspicuous up front because I desperately needed them, but after that, I was able to ride the momentum of "THAT DOESN'T COUNT" and didn't feel as dependent on the old standbys—plus, there were just fewer of them. ANYA and ABBA and ROTH and RUBIO were the only remaining name gimmes (could've done without that last one, but we'll let that one go for now). NAST was maybe the crosswordesiest name in the grid today, the one that is most likely to provide traction to veteran solvers like me while simultaneously baffling many others (64A: "Santa Claus in Camp" artist, 1863). Thomas NAST might be considered the official cartoonist of crosswords, in that he has been a grid staple for ages and I rarely see him discussed outside crosswords. He's famous for popularizing the Democratic donkey and the Republican elephant as political symbols, and for lampooning the 19c. Democratic political machine of Tammany Hall and "Boss" Tweed (a notoriously corrupt politician). NAST is also credited with the first depiction of the modern Santa Claus (I think "Santa Claus in Camp" might in fact be that depiction). Because I knew this, I was able to get NAST simply from the fact that the answer was four letters. Again, it felt slightly like cheating to know this stuff I probably wouldn't know if I hadn't been solving (and writing about) crosswords for decades. But oh well, what good is experience if you can't benefit from it, I suppose. 

Bullets:

• 18A: Group with the hits "Honey, Honey" and "Money, Money, Money" (ABBA) — this answer was ... a gimme.

• 1D: One of a nursery rhyme quintet (PIGGY) — never thought of the toe-counting game as a "nursery rhyme," but I suppose it qualifies. Also, we have ten piggies ... but I guess the song only covers five of them, so the clue is technically fine.
• 61A: The so-called "hurricane bird," because of its reputation for seeking shelter from storms at the last possible moment (IBIS) — yes, if you are going to give me IBIS for the umpteenth time, make it interesting—write a novel-length clue about it, why not!? When I thought TESTY was TENSE (50D: Easily set off), I thought the "hurricane bird" was a TERN.
• 55D: Pool set? (GENE) — you know the phrase "gene pool"? Well then you probably understand this clue, moving on ...
• 29D: Where an annoying person might be told to go? (AWAY) — I don't know who's responsible for this clue, but it made me laugh, so thanks. Extremely anticlimactic. It works.
• 19A: Something won by successful Olympians (GLORY) — so yeah, no, not MEDAL
• 66A: Like koalas, in Australia (GREY) — maybe my favorite misdirect of all. The qualifier "in Australia" seems so bizarre, since koalas are native exclusively to Australia. So my first thought was "uh ... HOME?" Then I got GREY, mostly from crosses, and thought "wait ... aren't they GREY everywhere? What does Australia have to do with it?" Then I remembered that GREY is actually spelled GRAY in the U.S. It's only spelled GREY in Britain and Commonwealth countries ... like Australia. It's a spelling clue! Bah! But also wow. Good one.

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

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Dad's pop, perhaps / SAT 6-20-26 / Moment of high spirits? / Turnovers, but not crumpets / Jokey warning before diving into a niche topic / Destination for a day trip from Sorrento / Big name in lights / Website with a "Submit a Rumor" tab / ___ Howard, activist known as te "Mother of Pride" / Helen with the podcast "Go Fact Yourself" / Man's name whose first four letters spell a word describing its last letter / State-sponsored "wealth redistribution" scheme

Constructor: Katie Hoody

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: BRENDA Howard (21A: ___ Howard, activist known as the "Mother of Pride") —

[glaad.org]

Brenda Howard (December 24, 1946 – June 28, 2005) was an American bisexual rights activist and sex-positive feminist. The Brenda Howard Memorial Award is named for her. [...] A militant activist who helped plan and participated in LGBT rights actions for over three decades, Howard was an active member of the Gay Liberation Front^[2] and for several years chair of the Gay Activists Alliance's Speakers Bureau^[3] in the post-Stonewall era. A fixture in New York City's LGBT Community, Howard was active in the Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Rights which helped guide New York City's Gay rights law through the City Council in 1986 as well as ACT UP and Queer Nation. (wikipedia)

• • •

[14D: One of a noted quintet]

This started out very hard, but that's often the way Saturdays start—with me just picking around for a while trying to find a seam I can grab hold of so that I can tear the lid off. For some reason I'm thinking of the jars of peanut butter we get, which come with a foil top under the regular jar lid and you have to pull it off but it's always an ordeal and then when you do find the little (very little) bit that you're supposed to pull on, you pull it and instead of taking the whole top off it just rips off in your hand and so you have to actually get a knife and run it along the edge of the jar to get the damn thing off. It's like that. I think various toiletries come with similar annoying foil covers—lotions and toothpastes and what not. Anyway, you hunt for the little bit that will give you some leverage and then you pull and hope for the best. Today, I hunted all over the NW and got nothing. Well, I kinda thought CAPRI might be right (1D: Destination for a day trip from Sorrento), but otherwise, nothing. First thing in the grid that I was certain about was SPOT (20A: Be prepared to take a weight off someone's shoulders?), which probably should've given me ONION (7D: Bulb that becomes translucent when heated), but it didn't, so I decamped for the NE, which was much friendlier. Despite knowing neither STAR (??) (10D: Big name in lights) or BRENDA, I got into the NE via TIMER, WIDEST (I knew it was an -EST, at least), and STAT (26A: Turnovers, but not crumpets). And then the big breakthrough, GREAT LAKE (14D: One of a noted quintet)—which is where I will be in exactly five days: Lake Huron, the last lake on our annual summer GREAT LAKE vacation adventure (Michigan 2022, Superior 2023, Erie 2024, Ontario 2025, Huron 2026). Not sure if we're gonna embark on some new collection of places to visit, or if we're just gonna accept that Superior is superior and go there every summer. Either way, we get to see my best friends every summer, which is the point. Actually, the point point is our moving to Minnesota to live in the same city (if not the same neighborhood) as my best friends, but that's another story ... where was I? GREAT LAKE! It helped me get started. Helped me greatly. Pretty soon I was here:

[WHOO? Oh, right, I had SHOO and hadn't yet fixed the whole thing (39D: "Get outta here!" = "WHOA!"—a statement of disbelief, not a command to leave)]

Once the middle was sorted, I had access to all the remaining corners, and while the NW remained the toughest (I had to come in through the back ends of answers, which is always harder than coming in through the front), the whole puzzle got a lot easier. SW went down in Tuesday fashion, and SE wasn't much tougher, although HONG (?) forced me to work a little (56A: Helen with the podcast "Go Fact Yourself"), as did the tough (and clever) clue on TOAST (49D: Moment of high spirits?) ("high" as in "lifted," as in "Raise a glass...!"). I also took a while to commit to SEA DRAGON down there because it sounds fictional (60A: Creature whose appendages allow it to camouflage in masses of kelp). But no, it's real alright.

As for that pesky NW, even after I got going in there, I still had trouble with ___ CANNON (I wanted TEE, since I've only ever heard them called "T-shirt cannons") and ___ POINT (17A: That's not the whole story!) (I thought maybe "story" was being used punnily to refer to a level of a building ... which actually did happen elsewhere in the puzzle: 23D: Stories of college students? (DORM). I like that Katie wrote NOT MY FINEST WORK right across the middle of this puzzle—funny bit of self-deprecation. It's probably not her finest work, but it's very good. Colorful and varied answers, no real moments of wincing, and enough bite to make things interesting.

Mistakes? Besides the ones I've already covered, not many. SHOO before WHOA (39D: "Get outta here!"). AIR before ACT (4D: What one might put on to impress others). HELM before DESK (55D: Anchor position). I thought maybe Helen HUNT had a podcast I hadn't heard about (56A: Helen with the podcast "Go Fact Yourself" = HONG). We have to know podcasters now? But there are Sooooooo Many, ugh. If I needed a HONG (that wasn't just [___ Kong]), I think I'd've gone with HONG Chau, whose presence in a movie is one of the most reliable indicators that I will see said movie. I would not have thought that was true until just now, but when I looked at her filmography, I realized I'd seen five of her last eight movies (The Menu, Showing Up, Asteroid City, Wuthering Heights, The Sheep Detectives). She got an Academy Award nomination for The Whale, which I never saw. She's never been in the puzzle, neither as HONG nor as CHAU. She should be a name double threat! Like ISAO AOKI, but for the 21st century.

["We gel!"]

Bullets:

• 34A: Soprano Fleming (RENÉE) — a very helpful gimme. She gave me the "R" for the other name in the middle of the grid, which had a much more elaborate (and funnier) clue (34D: Man's name whose first four letters spell a word describing its last letter = RINGO). I don't normally like these non-specific clues that ask you to drop or add or move letters around to figure them out, but this one was different. Sufficiently clever, such that I wasn't annoyed. My first thought for a man's name in five letters starting with "R" was ROGER, but then I was like "'how does 'ROGE' describe 'R'?" (Later, ROGER actually showed up (51D: "Got it")). Cryptic crosswords have primed me to think "O" when I see "ring," so this clue felt very comfy.
• 62A: N.B.A. analyst Burke (DORIS) — I don't follow pro sports too closely any more but I still know who DORIS Burke is. Big name in basketball commentary. She's got a lot of "First woman to ..." credits and is just a well respected analyst generally.

• 43A: ___ Ewbank, Hall-of-Fame football coach (WEEB) — the puzzle does get a little name-y (seven people, plus ROGER and RINGO), and this is probably the crosswordesiest of them all. I wrote in WEEB thinking "it's WEEB, right? Really, WEEB? But yeah ... I think so." It's a name I know solely from doing crosswords lo these many years. He coached the Jets to their one and only Super Bowl ... the year I was born. Reading about him just now led me to discover that there was a game he coached in that's famous enough to have a name: The Heidi Game. How in the world does a professional football game end up named after a 19th-century children's novel about a five-year-old girl? Well ... funny story:

The Heidi Game was a 1968 American Football League (AFL) game between the Oakland Raiders and the visiting New York Jets. The contest, held on November 17, 1968, was notable for its exciting finish, in which Oakland scored two touchdowns in the final minute to win the game 43–32. However, NBC, the game's television broadcaster, decided to break away from its coverage on the East Coast to broadcast the television film Heidi, which caused many viewers to miss the Raiders' comeback. (wikipedia)

• 6D: Website with a "Submit a Rumor" tab (SNOPES) — TMZ wouldn't fit, and so I was out of ideas until I got a few crosses.
• 31D: Fair weather followers (SNOWBIRDS) — we get a lot of these in the NE—retirees (mostly) who leave for warmer climes during the colder months but come back to the NE for the summers and the notably gorgeous falls. And here I am planning to retire to Minnesota. Is there a cute avian name for those of us who want to spend our later years in the freezing cold of Minnesota? LOONS?

That's all for today. See you next time. Happy last day of spring!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Wait, CREAM SODA is "Dad's pop"!? Man, I have really entered old man territory, I guess. I love the stuff. You're missing out, kids.

P.P.S. I’m being told that “Dad’s” refers to the brand of soda, and not the fact that only old men drink it. Ok. CREAM SODA *does* seem old-fashioned, as soda types go. Also, I was not aware that Dad’s made any soda besides root beer. 

[Got this one at a bagel shop in NYC at the end of a hot day. Delicious]

   

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Pomegranate morsel / SAT 5-9-26 / Black-and-white debut of 1912 / Portable retirement option / Setup for an extra point / Won land / ___ Kitchen, brand of organic foods since 1987 / Great find in the candy aisle, by the sound of it / 2000 parody of a 62-Across / Skirt with a bunch of leaves / Weighty subject of some children's books / Parlor treat typically serve with the first five letters of its name / Central Plains nation governed by the Nasharo Council

Constructor: Katie Hoody

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: DABO Sweeney (37D: Clemson's ___ Swinney (winningest head football coach in A.C.C. history)) —

William Christopher "Dabo" Swinney (/ˈdæboʊ ˈswiːniː/; born November 20, 1969) is an American college football coach, currently serving as the head football coach at Clemson University. Swinney took over as head coach of the Clemson Tigers seven games into the 2008 season, following the resignation of Tommy Bowden. Swinney's team won national championships in 2016 and 2018. His 2018 Clemson Tigers have often been considered one of the greatest college football teams of all time. He is the winningest head coach in Clemson football history and Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) football history. [...] Swinney's nickname "Dabo" was given to him as an infant by his brother, Tripp, who would try to enunciate "that boy" when referring to Swinney. (wikipedia)

• • •

What makes a game of poker into a POKER PARTY? (26D: Event at which you hope to get good deals?) Chips? Beer? I mean, it doesn't matter, I'm still not going ... just curious. Anyway, despite my not caring about poker or college football (a POKER PARTY where they put on college football would be one of the least likely places to find me), I really enjoyed this puzzle, which was way, way easier than yesterday's. Feels like the days got switched. The only mystery proper noun in this one was DABO, and he wasn't actually a mystery to me—despite not paying a lick of attention to college football for decades, I still managed to pick up that guy's name. "Oh, he's the guy with that name ... that name that's not a name ... ends in an 'O'"—that was enough for me. Plus the crosses on his name were easy, in case you were at a total loss. I was all set to say "that's a ridiculous name" but then I learned that it was a nickname given to him because when he was a baby, his brother would refer to him as "that boy" and it came out DABO. Hard not to find that at least a little endearing. But as I said, his name was the only proper noun in the puzzle that seemed like it might throw some (non-college-sports follower) people. DABO Swinney is probably much more famous than ARI SHAPIRO, generally, but with crossword solvers ... I'm guessing you all are much more of an NPR crowd (27D: Radio journalist with the 2023 memoir "The Best Strangers in the World: Stories From a Life Spent Listening"). I suppose it's possible you've never heard of AMY'S Kitchen (1D: ___ Kitchen, brand of organic foods since 1987), but that one was a gimme for me—first thing in the grid. I had much more trouble with the proper noun next door: LEO I. I thought he was one of them OTTOs or even OTHOs. But nope, just another Leo (Just Another Leo ... tell the pope he can have that memoir title for free). 

Not always thrilled by the heavily segmented four-quadrant puzzle, but this four-quadrant puzzle wasn't actually heavily segmented at all—lots of nice flow provided by the crossing central 15s, which are probably the element that make this feel much more like a Friday than a Saturday. They gave the puzzle a good deal of whoosh—access to every corner in very little time. The STRAWBERRY SHAKE clue is clever, for sure, but far too easy (for a Saturday) (8D: Parlor treat typically served with the first five letters of its name). I had the STRAW part before I ever looked at the clue. Got KINDA SORTA MAYBE from pieces of SORTA and MAYBE (38: List of qualifications?). I'm not sure I fully believe in the phrase KINDA SORTA MAYBE. "Kinda sorta," sure. The "maybe" part is taking it a little far, but I trust that enough people say the three-part version of this purposefully redundant phrase to make it a valid expression. I certainly got the KINDA part easily enough, and the whole thing sounds ... fine, so ... fine. 

While the puzzle wasn't hard today, it did have lots of twisty language in the cluing. Plenty of "?" clues, and then ambiguously misdirective stuff like 35D: Sound made by many fans (ROAR) ("fans" here are at a sporting event or concert or the like). 67A: Skirt with a bunch of leaves is a skirt STEAK and the leaves are a SALAD. The "dash" in 12D: Statement that may be followed by a dash is a footrace ("I'LL RACE YOU"). The "retirement" in 32A: Portable retirement option is sleep (COT) (lots of initial IRAs there today, I'm guessing). The "won" in 52D: Won land is currency (KOREA). The "setup" in 40D: Setup for an extra point is a verbal setup, a word that sets up a further "point" that you might want to make ("ALSO ..."). The subject in 11D: Weighty subject of some children's books is "weighty" not because it's serious, but because the subject. literally weighs a ton (or several tons, I guess—I've honestly never thought about BABAR's weight). Despite all of this trickiness, I only made two real mistakes today, neither of them serious. For 39D: Bath seat? (ARSE), I wrote in APSE (!?!?). I was thinking there's a cathedral in Bath, and maybe you sit in the APSE? But no, it's just British "ass." My favorite mistake, though, came in the candy aisle. I decided, in all my crossword geniositude, that 51A: Great find in the candy aisle, by the sound of it (SKÖR) must be a "great find ... by the sound of it" because you "see" it ... so ... SEE'S! SEE'S candy! I'll accept my Smart Guy Crossword Medal now, thank you.

Bullets:

• 11A: One making calls on the fly? (BIRD) — needed every cross and still didn't really get it. "So... the birds are deciding who's going to eat the fly? What are these, swallows? I don't get it." But no. Birds simply fly ... and make their ordinary bird calls while doing so.
• 17A: Exclamation of surprise from a host ("YOU'RE EARLY!") — on its own, I'm not sure I would've thought this was the greatest candidate for a crossword answer, but with that clue, the phrase feels perfectly natural. Gives some colloquial sparkle to an already fairly sparkly grid.
• 62A: 2000 parody of a 62-Across (SCARY MOVIE) — another perfect clue. Nice use of the self-referential strategy.
• 59D: Kilo follower (LIMA) — NATO alphabet: "... Juliett, Kilo, LIMA, Mike (Mike!?!?) ..."
• 63D: New ___ University of Knuckleheads (fictional institution where Leslie Nielsen lectured about the Three Stooges) (YUK) — a very long way to go for YUK but I really enjoyed the journey. That is, I enjoyed (finally) discovering the answer. Nice callback to MOE, too (6D: One of the Three Stooges).

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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Add to a columbarium, say / SAT 3-28-26 / Pokémon that wakes only to eat / Program for those trying to reduce screen time, familiarly? / Short addition above or below a musical staff / Dominican poet Pedro / Bit of shorthand in some age cohorts / Former M.L.B. team with the mascot Youppi! / Vessel often stored upside down / Hindu counterpart of Eros / Short-lived particle / Start of a Christmas carol in Latin / Provider of virtual trips to Mars since 2003

Constructor: Katie Hoody

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: LEDGER LINE (8D: Short addition above or below a musical staff) —

A ledger line or leger line is used in Western musical notation to notate pitches above or below the lines and spaces of the regular musical staff. A line slightly longer than the note head is drawn parallel to the staff, above or below, spaced at the same distance as the lines within the staff.

The origin of the word is uncertain, but may have been borrowed attributively from the term for a horizontal timber in a scaffolding, lying parallel to the face of the building and supporting the putlogs. There is no basis to support the often-found claim that the word originates from the French léger, meaning "light" or "slight". The Oxford online dictionary describes the origin of the "leger" spelling as a "variant of ledger" that first appeared in the 19th century. (wikipedia)

• • •

80% recovered from my shingles vaccine side effects this morning, and thank god, because I needed all my solving power to finish this one, which fought me like a Saturday should. Not the most exciting grid I've ever seen, and some of the cluing was fussy / irksome, but for once I can't say "too easy" about a Saturday puzzle, so that was nice. Those giant NE and SW corners are well handled—lots of long answers running into other long answers, all of them coming out pretty clean—but there were only a few answers that made me think "nice!": TOO FAR GONE, "IT'LL BE FINE," and "ARE WE COOL?" (even though I probably hear it more commonly as simply "we cool?"). I also kinda like the rhyming POOL NOODLE / TOY POODLE crossing. Felt like the puzzle knew what it was doing there, like it did a little pirouette, a little flourish. I like that. I didn't like how the puzzle took some of its ugliest fill and gave it hard clues. Nothing worse than struggling with a clue only to have the answer be something like INURN (3D: Add to a columbarium, say) (if I ever knew what a "columbarium" was, I forgot) or TSA PRE (a very ugly answer, but I will give credit to that clue, which gets its difficulty from cleverness and not from obscure vocabulary) (20D: Program for those trying to reduce screen time, familiarly?) (TSA PRE is for "pre-checked" fliers ... their TSA line is typically shorter, hence "reduced screen(ing) time").

For me, the hardest answer was also kinda dull—I simply had no idea about LEDGER LINE. Once I got it, at the very end, I thought "sounds kinda familiar," but while solving, oof, trouble. I got the LINE part OK, eventually, but the LEDGER part ... that turned out to be the heart of the hardest part of the grid for me: the LEDGER part of LEDGER LINE, the MEDIA part of MEDIA HYPE (18A: Amped-up coverage), GEN (21A: Bit of shorthand in some age cohorts), and OWIES (esp. OWIES) (9D: Targets of some kisses) combined to make my final few squares of the solve a real adventure. Before that, the one real trouble spot was TSA PRE across GRATER (26A: It has holes and cuts) and CRONIES (35A: Members of a kitchen cabinet). I simply didn't know what a "kitchen cabinet" was (or ... I had some vague idea, but not one that was going to get me to CRONIES any time soon). Outside those two sections, the puzzle wasn't too tough, but those two sections really gummed things up.

SNORLAX was seven random letters to me (51A: Pokémon that wakes only to eat). The Internet tells me there are over 1,000 Pokémon to date. Since I am an adult and have been an adult during the entire time Pokémon have existed and since my kid was never into Pokémon, that whole universe is terra incognita to me (and will remain so). Asking me to know SNORLAX seems about as absurd as asking me to know George Jetson's computer "friend" R.U.D.I. (see yesterday's puzzle). But, you know, the crosses are fair, so you just shrug and move on. I am grateful to the puzzle that it didn't make me spend a lot of time time struggling to get SNORLAX. Got a little dicey there when I couldn't remember the [Actor who played priests in "The Mission" (1986) and "Silence" (2016)], but I eventually got enough crosses to see Liam NEESON, and that final "N" was the last thing I needed for SNORLAX. I feel bad for the solver who knows nothing about Pokémon and knows nothing about Major League Baseball. That "X" (in EXPOS) is probably inferable, but still, that cross could be dicey for some subset of solvers. But in general I think the SNORLAX crosses are common knowledge. (That EXPOS clue was a gimme for me) (48D: Former M.L.B. team with the mascot Youppi!).

[SNORLAX]

Bullets:

• 14A: Vessel often stored upside down (CANOE) — "Vessel" is what makes this a real Saturday clue. I was picturing some kind of pot or pan or ewer or cruet or ... something kitchen-y.
• 19A: Young in old Hollywood (LORETTA) — her fame has not endured the way some other old Hollywood actors' fame has. She was a major star, but sitting here right now, without looking her up, I don't think I could name one of her movies. I think she was in a western with Robert Mitchum that I liked ... something about "stars?" ... nope, no "stars"—it's called Rachel and the Stranger (RKO's most successful film of 1948). "Stranger" starts with the letters in "star" ... I wonder if that's what I was thinking. Anyway, LORETTA Young won an Academy Award for Best Actress (The Farmer's Daughter, 1947). She had a couple of TV shows, too, in the '50s and '60s, and worked well into the late 20th century, winning a Golden Globe for Best Actress—Miniseries or Television Movie for Lady in a Corner (1989).

• 57A: Letter after Sierra (TANGO) — had the "T" and wrote in TAHOE—still obviously under the influence of yesterday's Mac Operating System clue for TAHOE (Sierra was also a Mac O/S).
• 1D: Where locks are set (SCALP) — this one is trying maybe too hard. Yes, your hair ("locks") is "set" in your SCALP. Hard to deny, yet awkward on the page. Very awkward. I think I had CANAL here at first.
• 29A: Short-lived particle (PION) — I had MUON at first. I know particle names solely from crosswords. I don't really know anything about them.
• 24D: Producers of an annual light show (LEONIDS) — annual meteor shower
• 54D: Dominican poet Pedro (MIR) — this is the puzzle trying desperately to pretend that MIR isn't still crosswordese. It's still crosswordese. Once a space station, always a space station.
• 41A: Start of a Christmas carol in Latin (ADESTE) — speaking of crosswordese! Once again ... to the rescue! (“ADESTE Fideles” = “O Come, All Ye Faithful”). This was a gimme and was instrumental in my getting into the SE corner (via TROUTS ... a plural about which the less said the better)

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Cold bathhouse amenity / SAT 12-27-25 / Extreme music subgenre with heavily distorted guitars / 2021 science fiction novel by Nnedi Okorafor / Fantasy author Bardugo / City west of Knoxville / Best performances by an actor in a short film? / Halves of Hamiltons / Knights of ___, ancient cult in the "Star Wars" universe / Interloper whom no one seems to know, informally / South American monkey with a reduplicative name / John with some groundbreaking inventions

Constructor: Katie Hoody

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: O'SHEA Jackson Jr. (49D: Actor ___ Jackson Jr.) —

O'Shea Jackson Jr. (born February 24, 1991), also known by the stage name OMG, is an American actor, rapper and songwriter. He is the oldest son of Ice Cube and, in his feature film debut, he portrayed his father in the 2015 biopic Straight Outta Compton.

• • •

[CRINKLE-CUT]

Well this is more like it. This is the kind of late-week grid I live for. Just stacked with sparkling long answers—triple stacks of 10 (well, 10-10-9) in every dang corner, plus a couple of gridspanners that cut the grid in half, top-to-bottom as well as lengthwise. It was the central long Down that really cracked things open, sending me whooshing from the top of the grid all the way to the bottom with just a little push from the first few letters:

From there, I had access to the SW corner, and it only remained for me to throw JACK DIDDLY SQUAT across the grid to get a toehold in the SE as well. The long answers really lit up the grid at every turn. Not a dull patch to be found. I particularly loved sinking into the DEATH METAL PLUNGE POOL of AQUITAINE.  Now there's a historical fantasy novel title for you. I would read The DEATH METAL PLUNGE POOL of AQUITAINE. Maybe Bardugo and Okorafor could team up on that one. Got bestseller written all over it. I don't normally care for DEATH METAL, or any metal (29D: Extreme music subgenre with heavily distorted guitars), but man that answer looks good, particularly when paired so incongruously with PLUNGE POOL. Are DEATH METAL PLUNGE POOLs kept at ROOM TEMP? That doesn't seem very ... deathy. 

Once again, there was way, way too little resistance for a Saturday puzzle, and the way the puzzle went about generating what little resistance it offered was the cheap way, i.e. via trivia. NOOR is crosswordese of old, but today the puzzle tried to hide it behind a new clue (11D: 2021 science fiction novel by Nnedi Okorafor)—which, good for them, but also, a recentish scifi novel that didn't win any major awards ... that's gonna be a big ??? for a lot of solvers. NOOR sounds like a cool book, actually, but as book titles go, I don't know how familiar it is. That clue is here to be a speed bump. It's the kind of trivia you either know or don't, and that you can't even infer from the clue. I'd love for this puzzle to be harder, but via clever cluing, not pop culture quizzes. See also LEIGH Bardugo—a bestselling author, for sure, but why are we going to the fantasy/scifi well twice in one puzzle? And going to Superman lore (LARA) and Star Wars yet again (REN). I feel like I should put up a "___ Days Without a Star Wars Clue" sign around here. I doubt we'd ever get out of single digits, and mostly the sign would read "0." Weirdly, I think I'd mind these pop culturefied short answers less if the puzzle was harder generally. Like, you wanna come at me, come at me. Throwing up these little proper noun roadblocks isn't going to do it. They probably aren't tough enough to hold anyone up for very long. You can just blow right through and around them. (Note: I actually knew LEIGH Bardugo, but only vaguely, and I remembered her today mainly because she blurbed the back of R.F. Kuang's new book Katabasis, which I started reading yesterday—when will KUANG hit the grid? Or RFKUANG—now that's got grid potential!)

The hardest thing in the grid for me, by far, was DEMO REEL (37D: Best performances by an actor in a short film?). Could not parse that baby to save my life. Needed every cross. Was it the very last answer I got? Yup, you can see on my finished grid (above) that only after I got that final "L" from SPIEL was the answer complete, and only a few seconds after that did I parse it correctly. Actually, I probably sat there with the last square unfilled until I realized how "L" was supposed to work—I hate putting in the last letter if I'm not extremely sure that I'm going to get the "Congratulations" message. Obviously, it's the "?" clue on DEMO REEL that's causing the problem. First of all, it looks like a plural ("Best performances..."). At first, I thought the clue was kind of forced and convoluted, but now I see it's actually extremely literal. A DEMO REEL will showcase an actor's best performances. Nice. More of this, please! It's Saturday! Whack me with a DEMO REEL or two (or four or nine).

Aside from a tendency to lean into crosswordese in the margins, the one thing that I didn't really care for today was JACK DIDDLY SQUAT. Feels like a conjoined twins-type answer. Which is to say, I know that term "jack squat" very well. Hear it all the time. And I know the term "diddly squat." I don't hear it all the time, but I definitely hear it. JACK DIDDLY SQUAT, though, I do not hear. I'm sure someone has said it, but it seems infinitely more likely that you'd opt for either JACK or DIDDLY rather than try to grab hold of both of them at once. The phrase just didn't ring true to my ear.

Not that it matters much, but this grid has 90º rotational symmetry. That is, usually if you rotate a crossword grid 180º, the black squares end up in the same place (ordinary rotational symmetry), but today, the black squares end up in the same place with every 90º turn. That's, like, twice the symmetry. Double your symmetry, double your fun! Or ... fail to notice or appreciate it at all. Your call!

Bullets:

• 5A: ___ Seton, author of "Foxfire" and "Katherine" (ANYA) — more of that crosswordese I was talking about. I have seen ANYA's name a lot, but only in crosswords. See also ALOP, yikes. Oh, and ABES—still not a thing.
• 22A: City west of Knoxville (OAK RIDGE) — What? Where? "Oak Ridge's population was 31,402 at the 2020 census" (wikipedia). The only thing I know about OAK RIDGE is boys. They are famous for their boys.

• 47D: Hollywood icon Davis (BETTE) — you've heard of the Three-Body Problem? Well, this is the Four-Davis Problem—VIOLA? OSSIE? GEENA? BETTE? The only way you're gonna know for sure is if you get some crosses.
• 28A: Bussing on the street, e.g., in brief (PDA) — that's "bussing" as in "kissing," not "bussing" as in "sending kids to school on the bus" (which is also spelled "bussing," but also, maybe more commonly, spelled "busing"). PDA = public display of affection.

Continuing with 🌲🐈Holiday Pet Pics🐕🌲 now. Note: PLEASE DO NOT SEND ME ANY MORE PET PICS, I'M ALL FULL UP FOR THIS YEAR, thank you.

First up is Bugle the one-eyed pirate! Look at his sweet tabby face, his cute asymmetrical white markings. If you look only at the left side of his face, he looks like he's sleeping. But no! It's a trick! He is vigilant! A vigilant tree guardian! 

[Thanks, Meredith!]

Lucy, on the other hand, is not really known for her vigilance. Not really a guard dog. More of a lie-around-and-accept-scritches dog. It takes all kinds, Lucy. They also serve who only stand and wait (for scritches)!

[Thanks, Anne and Jacob!]

Remi's like "who is this weird beardo and can I tear him up?" Go for it, Remi!

[Thanks, Tom and Ann]

And now a live shot of me! ... nope, I'm sorry, this is actually Baloo. We apparently have the same interests, the same energy level, the same impeccable typing posture. Also, we enjoy the same holiday-season activities. (R.I.P., you sweet cruciverbalist baby)

[Thanks, Jennifer!]

Mindy the Morkie is ready for her close-up...

[Thanks, Karen!]

And finally there's Anni, who is going back to bed, what time is it even? (R.I.P., sweetheart)

[Thanks, Kat!]

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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❤️ Support this blog ❤️: 

• Venmo (@MichaelDavidSharp)]

=============================
✏️ Upcoming Crossword Tournaments ✏️

• American Crossword Puzzle Tournament (Stamford, CT, Apr. 10-12, 2026) (registration opens January 8!)

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📘 My other blog 📘:

• Pop Sensation (vintage paperbacks)

Read more...