So-called "Champagne of Spain" / FRI 6-5-26 / Seaweed-based gels / What might give a hand in a casino? / Small marsupial whose name is spelled using only the letters of TROP / ___ Neal, co-star of TV's "The Hughleys" / Actor Gilliam of "The Wire" / Pioneering civil rights activist ___ Arnold Hedgeman / Opposite of "stay silent"

Constructor: Kelly Morenus

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: POTOROO (37D: Small marsupial whose name is spelled using only the letters of TROP) —

Potoroo is a common name for species of Potorous, a genus of smaller marsupials. They are allied to the Macropodiformes, the suborder of kangaroo, wallaby, and other rat-kangaroo genera and is the only genus in the tribe Potoroini. All three extant species are threatened by ecological changes since the colonisation of Australia, especially the long-footed potoroo Potorous longipes (endangered) and P. gilbertii (critically endangered). The broad-faced potoroo P. platyops disappeared after its first description in the 19th century. The main threats are predation by introduced species (especially foxes) and habitat loss.

Potoroos were formerly very common in Australia, and early settlers reported them as being significant pests to their crops. (wikipedia)

• • •

The long answers up top and down below are just fine. Chatty, breezy, in-the-language. Nice. The rest ... I really don't see the appeal of any of it. This is Friday, you can do anything! All that space. And what do I get? DEALER'S SHOE?! (10D: What might give a hand in a casino?). I barely know what a "shoe" is in this context, but thank god I did, because otherwise I'd still be wondering what the hell the dealer was doing, using, or possibly wearing. In case you are unfamiliar, a "shoe" is a thingie that holds cards, looks like this:

The other marquee Down is PARASAILING, which is fine, but not terribly interesting, and the rest of the puzzle is fairly blah. Fridays should not be blah. On top of the blahness, there was the barrage of names. I laughed out loud when I hit my third ???? name. Some guy who won a Chemistry Nobel 45 years ago? I guess this is the price we pay for canceling ROALD Dahl. Crossword needs better ROALDs! We have a ROALD emergency! Calling all ROALDs! Well, not all ROALDs. Not this ROALD. Yeesh. Also, somebody who acted on The Hughleys? (28D: ___ Neal, co-star of TV's "The Hughleys"). A pioneering civil rights person? (46D: Pioneering civil rights activist ___ Arnold Hedgeman). It's not that these people are totally uncrossworthy, it's just ... name name name. Or more like "unfamous name unfamous name unfamous name." Oh, dang, I forgot about SETH, another TV actor (13D: Actor Gilliam of "The Wire"). Throw him in there too. Just not my day for names. At all. But I think it was the POTOROO that really made me ... "mad" isn't the right word, but—that is not an animal I've ever heard of. And that clue! (37D: Small marsupial whose name is spelled using only the letters of TROP) ... you know your animal is obscure when the puzzle has to resort to telling you "it has these letters in it!" Also, what is "TROP"? Why "TROP" and not, say, "PORT"? PORT has the virtue of being a word. An English word, I should say. "TROP" is a French word (meaning "too" as in "excessively"). I think it's also the nickname of a ballfield where the Marlins ... played? Play? The TROP! Gah, no. Not the Marlins. Close, but no. The Tampa Bay Rays play there, not the Miami Marlins. Shows you how much I care about Florida baseball. I still don't think of those Florida teams as real because I didn't grow up with them. Also, they both used to. have different names (The Tampa Bay Devil Rays, the Florida Marlins). Anyway, POTOROO! It's a thing, apparently! Sounds like an Australian music festival, but nope. Tiny marsupial. Who knew (besides all the Australians)?

I got the top third of this puzzle easy but then oof. Right around ROALD, things got rocky. Rocky ROALD! Also, the clue on PANTRIES was tough (26A: Grocery stores?). And I thought 27D: I I I (IOTAS) was THREE. And then ELISE is there in the east gumming things up. Managed to raggedly hack my way down to the bottom, only to encounter POTOROO (again I say, "!?"), and that's where I made my biggest mistake. Put in DEMS instead of LEFT at 41D: Blue side, with "the". Blue does not apply to the LEFT. The LEFT and the DEMS are Not The Same. Just ask the LEFT. Blue is associated with the DEMS. Red, Republicans, Blue, DEMS. That is how those colors work in this country. So ... DEMS left me wondering how 41A: Not so rich, so to speak could be DIRE (answer: it couldn't be, the answer is LITE). Didn't know ANNA. Had END for AIM (46A: Destination). Was not at all confident that HOGANS were structures of the SW, but thank god that guess was correct, otherwise I might still be solving this thing. Because of all this, I had trouble seeing the long Acrosses down below. Tried to get the front ends of them, and while MRIS and AUDI were easy enough, that ugly fill-in-the-blank clue on IN ON, that got me (44D: __ a secret). I had "IT'S A" and later tried "I GOT." The clue isn't a quotation, so both those guesses were bound to be wrong, but I couldn't really see that. This made SING hard to get (53A: Opposite of "stay silent"). All of this fussing with mediocre fill and crummy clues and for what? A few good long answers. This just wasn't for me at all.

Bullets:

• 14A: "Can anyone explain this?!" ("MAKE IT MAKE SENSE!") — the clue is a question and the answer isn't, and the clue makes it sound like you're addressing a crowd, while the answer feels like the kind of thing you'd say to a specific person. But I guess the idea was to make this clue (14A: "Can anyone explain this?!") rhyme with the next clue (17A: "Let me try to explain ..."). It's a nice idea. But I still don't think this clue is right.
• 20A: Coat on a tip? (POLISH) — the coat on the "tip" of your finger, i.e. your nail. Nail POLISH.
• 30A: Seaweed-based gels (AGARS) — I'm enduring AGARS and IOTAS and EKES and EMTS and OROs rather than getting four to six more entertaining longer answers. I don't get it.
• 32A: So-called "Champagne of Spain" (CAVA) — pfft. Nope. I maybe have heard of this, but completely forgot it. I know KAVA (Polynesian plant used to make a psychoactive beverage). But CAVA, not so much. "Champagne of Spain" sounds like "Champagne of Beers," i.e. a highly dubious marketing slogan:

• 40A: Something you can see right through (IRIS) — another rough clue. You see through your IRIS. You don't see "right" through it. No one would say that. But I guess that's the point. Still, I didn't need more aggravation from the slew of short stuff today. Not helping.
• 45A: New wave band with the 1979 album "Duty Now for the Future" (DEVO) — got this easily, but I really thought the 1979 album was Freedom of Choice. Maybe that was 1980 ... yup, May 1980. I got it as a present at my 11th birthday party, at Aldo's Pizza. I got Abba: The Album. I remember very clearly disdaining the Abba (not cool by young boy standards in 1980) and my mom giving me a very stern talking-to, right then and there, about gratitude. Years later I would come to think Abba was awesome. And that is my DEVO story. DEVO: cool then, cool now ... but the album in this clue is slightly obscure. It peaked at #73 and provided only one recognizable single: their semi-cover (?) of "Secret Agent [not 'Asian'] Man":

• 49A: Provide proactive help, in a way (RUN INTERFERENCE) — that clue did little to get me to the answer. It's accurate enough, I guess, but it doesn't quite get at the whole idea of "handling a bunch of secondary problems or distractions for someone so that person can focus on the primary task," which is how I think of the phrase RUN INTERFERENCE.
• 23D: 500 competitor (RACER) — no "Indy" or "Daytona" for you, solver. Just ... 500! Is that normal racing slang? Car racing, like casino shoes, and casinos in general—not my thing.
• 31D: People not to argue with, they say (FOOLS) — this was also weirdly hard. Do "they" really say this? I mean, it seems like good advice, but this is not a saying about FOOLS that I know. A fool and his money are soon parted, I know that one. Fool me once, shame on me, etc. That's another "fool" saying. You certainly shouldn't argue with people on the internet, ever (ever), but "don't argue with fools" does not have the zippy, memorable quality I associate with "sayings."

That's all for today. See you next time, hopefully with functioning internet (still using the hotspot on my phone until the new router arrives, later today)

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Beverage featured in "A Christmas Story" / FRI 11-7-25 / Illustrator of the Tammany Tiger / Bygone office assistant / In an awesome way, slangily / Victuals, informally / Domesticated insect entirely dependent on humans for reproduction / Novelist Fannie who wrote "Imitation of Life" (1933) / The Brady household including Alice, e.g. / Muscleman of 1980s TV

Constructor: Kelly Morenus

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Fannie HURST (1D: Novelist Fannie who wrote "Imitation of Life" (1933)) —

Fannie Hurst (October 18, 1889 – February 23, 1968) was an American novelist and short-story writer whose works were highly popular during the post-World War I era. Her work combined sentimental, romantic themes with social issues of the day, such as women's rights and race relations. She was one of the most widely read female authors of the 20th century, and for a time in the 1920s she was one of the highest-paid American writers. Hurst actively supported a number of social causes, including feminism, African American equality, and New Deal programs.

Although her novels, including Lummox (1923), Back Street (1931), and Imitation of Life (1933), lost popularity over time and were mostly out of print as of the 2000s, they were bestsellers when first published and were translated into many languages. She also published over 300 short stories during her lifetime.

Hurst is known for the film adaptations of her works, including Imitation of Life (1934), Four Daughters (1938), Imitation of Life (1959), Humoresque (1946), and Young at Heart (1954, a musical remake of Four Daughters). (wikipedia)

• • •

This didn't start out so great. It had the kind of fill up top that makes me sag and stop and take a screenshot to document the vibe

STENO TEAT ATSEA NSA ADES ... plus a no-longer-famous author of yore (HURST) and neo-crosswordese ELOTE (I still like ELOTE, both as a food and as an answer, but it really is starting to proliferate like an answer that's going to wear out its welcome, eventually—first NYTXW appearance in 2023, one more appearance in 2024, and now four appearances in 2025 (with ~eight weeks still left in the year). I'd include NAST in this crosswordy onslaught as well (20A: Illustrator of the Tammany Tiger) (I actually learned who NAST was from crosswords, way way way back in the early days of this blog—Jan. 23, 2007: Puzzle: [Tweed twitter Thomas]. Me: "!?!?!?!?!"). It was hard to appreciate the longer stuff in the NW with so much tired short stuff to hack through. But then I, and the puzzle, put the PEDAL TO THE METAL, and whoosh, off I went. 

[ENNEAD, i.e. a set of 9]

Did the fill improve? Yeah, a bit, but it still had a leaden, draggy feel here and there. It's probably strongest in the NE and into the center: FLIP OUT ON and LET IT RIDE are a great pair, and there's no compromises with the crosses up there. Things get a little uglier at ENNEAD and T'NIA Miller, a name I'm hearing of for the first time right now (and a debut answer). She seems to be a successful British actress who is in a lot of things I've never watched, mostly things I didn't know existed. If you say "Fall of the House of Usher" to me, I think Poe, and if you say "no, the movie," I think "Oh, Vincent Price! Cool!" But no. There was a TV show? Oh, a Netflix show. Shrug. Not a subscriber any more. And even when I was, I couldn't keep up with all the damned shows. Today's Fall of the House of Usher was actually a miniseries. I think I'll just stick with King Vincent, thanks.

The clue on PEDAL TO THE MEDAL felt bad, in the sense that it's not a complete command in that form, the way the clue suggests (8D: "Step on it!"). You need "Put the" at the front for it to be a plausible command. I guess I can imagine shouting the phrase without the "Put the" at the beginning, but it feels pretty contrived. The clue on LIKE A BOSS also felt slightly off to me (34D: In an awesome way, slangily). Something about "awesome" is too vague and not competence-specific enough. If you do something LIKE A BOSS, you do it with confidence, skill, and authority, which I suppose falls under the umbrella "awesomely" if you squint hard enough, but the clue just isn't on-the-nose enough. Anyway, "in an awesome way" is already slang. [With skill and panache, slangily] makes more sense.

I had some trouble with MAILER (I was thinking of much bigger, more industrial "shipping containers") (31A: Shipping container), and I think I had LUNA MOTH before SILK MOTH (just because I had four blank letters before MOTH and LUNA, you know, fit) (39A: Domesticated insect entirely dependent on humans for reproduction). Otherwise, no real errors, except a brief dalliance with GERM (30D: Very start, as of an idea = SEED). The SE corner went down like a Monday, as more of my crosswordesey friends (NERO, ORSINO, NSC, HAVA, ASNER) showed up and made things very easy.

Bullets:

• 57A: Modern identification method (RETINA SCAN) — and here I've been wasting valuable nanoseconds saying "RETINAL SCAN." Possibly because that's the actual term. But in common usage, the "L" gets dropped, it's fine. Slowed me down only as long as it took me to delete the "L."
• 15A: Synthetic upholstery material (ULTRASUEDE) — in Japan it is sold under the brand name ECSAINE, which is the kind of answer I see in my crossword nightmares. The very first paragraph of the wikipedia entry for ULTRASUEDE states that "It is used to make footbags (also known as hacky sacks) and juggling balls." Which is bizarrely specific. Did a hacky-sacker write this entry?
• 51A: Victuals, informally (GRUB) — I wanted EATS. See also CHOW.

• 52D: World capital on both banks of the Daugava River (RIGA) — had the "R" and "A" and completely instinctively wrote in ROMA. The crossword probability part of my brain simply overrode the "look at the actual words that are in the clue" part. Actually, it turns out, ROMA is only slightly more common than RIGA, in terms of all-time NYTXW appearances (309 to 298). This is the fifth RIGA of 2025, making this the most RIGAful year since 2003. Oh, maybe I should add that RIGA, in case you didn't know, is the capital of Latvia.

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Explicit subject for her? / FRI 7-18-25 / Akkadian or Phoenician / Certain fraternity guy, informally / Whiskey distiller's mixture / Psycho screenwriter Joseph / Place to put a pin / Luang Prabang native / Congressional record? / ___ the Jairite, biblical minster to King David

Constructor: Kelly Morenus

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none — DESCRIPTION

Word of the Day: David Lloyd George (30A: "___ is the most convenient time to tax rich people": David Lloyd George (DEATH)) —

David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor (17 January 1863 – 26 March 1945) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1916 to 1922. A Liberal Party politician from Wales, he was known for leading the United Kingdom during the First World War, for social-reform policies, for his role in the Paris Peace Conference, and for negotiating the establishment of the Irish Free State. [...] In 1915, Lloyd George became Minister of Munitions and expanded artillery shell production for the war. In 1916, he was appointed Secretary of State for War but was frustrated by his limited power and clashes with Army commanders over strategy. Asquith proved ineffective as prime minister and was replaced by Lloyd George in December 1916. He centralised authority by creating a smaller war cabinet. To combat food shortages caused by u-boats, he implemented the convoy system, established rationing, and stimulated farming. After supporting the disastrous French Nivelle Offensive in 1917, he had to reluctantly approve Field Marshal Douglas Haig's plans for the Battle of Passchendaele, which resulted in huge casualties with little strategic benefit. Against British military commanders, he was finally able to see the Allies brought under one command in March 1918. The war effort turned in Allied favour and was won in November. Following the December 1918 "Coupon" election, he and the Conservatives maintained their coalition with popular support. // Lloyd George was a leading proponent at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, but the situation in Ireland worsened, erupting into the Irish War of Independence, which lasted until Lloyd George negotiated independence for the Irish Free State in 1921.

• • •

This one had solid marquee answers, and it put up a bit of a fight, which is all I really want from a Friday puzzle. Bottom half way, way harder than the top for me. I did struggle at the beginning, but that was due almost entirely to my putting in O'ER instead of OFT at 3D: Poetic adverb). O'ER can be an adverb, as well as a preposition, and I've seen O'ER clued as "poetic" so many times that my instincts just kicked in there. Good example of how a teeny word can really gunk things up if you whiff it. The main obstacle to ditching O'ER was the Psycho screenwriter's name, which I really should've remembered, but didn't. I've taught that movie multiple times and read about its production so much that you'd think Joseph STEFANO's name would've stuck. But the only name I could think of there was Robert BLOCH, who wrote the novel Psycho was based on. Forgetting STEFANO + writing in O'ER = clumsy, awkward beginning. But eventually the lovely "THAT'S JUST TOO BAD" came swooping in and fixed up my mistake, and off I went, soaring through even things I didn't know like "ONE DAY MORE" (still never seen Les Mis, in any form). But once I hit the bottom half of the grid, things slowed Way down for a bit. I had real trouble descending into that bottom third, largely because ANTECEDENT formed such a strong barrier. Or, rather, its absence formed a strong barrier. Hardest clue in the puzzle for me (41A: Explicit subject for her?) ("her" is a pronoun, and pronouns require clear ANTECEDENTs, i.e. you need to know what the "explicit subject" of a pronoun is in order for it to make sense). Four different ANTECEDENT crosses ended up giving me grief. I had GEODES for GNEISS (?) (35D: Rock with bands); I couldn't remember which song Irving Berlin did and figured it must be one of them patriotic ones (he wrote "God Bless America," but nothing "glistens" in that one, whereas the TREETOPS definitely "glisten" in "White Christmas," Berlin's other very famous song); I had no idea what the Akkadian or Phoenician was supposed to be (SEMITE), nor what I was supposed to be seeing in the tomato patch. You've also got the MAA v. BAA kealoa* down there. For me, a real mess.

More trouble in the west of the puzzle where the David Lloyd George quotation clue was unclear (always hate quotation clues, as the answers never seem intuitive and I assume the clue writer just looked them up in some database of quotations—who goes around quoting David Lloyd George?? I mean, tax the (dead) rich, for sure, but SPARE US me the obscure quotations). I tried to go underneath that quotation word to get going again, but ended up writing in HENCE instead of SINCE at 32A: Between then and now. HENCE was a bad guess, but it does end in -NCE, you can't argue with that! Pffft. "X" marks the spot where I finished up, at the crossing of two clues that were both befuddling to me. I had no idea an AXLE had a pin—I thought it was the pin (the shaft around which wheels revolve). But apparently there's a pin that holds the AXLE in place, called an AXLE-pin. As for SEX TAPE, I forgot that the puzzle likes to hide sex behind the old-timey / clinical term "congress," which of course makes you think politics, not, uh, doing it. Anyway, a SEX TAPE is a "record" of "congressional" (i.e. sexual) activity. So, two troublesome clues come together with an emphatic "X" to end the puzzle. Put a stiff rod and a SEX TAPE together and you get a satisfying climax, you might say. *I* wouldn't say that, as it's an abhorrent sexual pun, but one might say it, is what I'm saying.

Big highlights of the day, beyond the SEX TAPE revelation, were "THAT'S JUST TOO BAD" (nice grid-spanning colloquial phrase) and LAYING IT ON THICK (ditto). I also enjoyed the MUD WRESTLE-ing and the emphasis on treachery (TRAITOR, DISLOYAL). "Quisling" will always be one of my favorite words because I learned it as a teenager. I loved the idea that one guy was such a traitor that his name actually came to mean traitor. I mean, he took the TRAITOR title right out of Benedict Arnold's hands. The lesson there is: don't betray Norway to the Nazis, especially if you have a super-funny-sounding name. People are gonna turn that against you.

Miscellaneous:

• 20A: Certain fraternity guy, informally (SIG) — one of my least fav things in the grid. I don't refer to "fraternity guy"s unless absolutely necessary, and this particular abbr. is a big meh. Also not a fan of the plural TADAS, which I can't believe people keep putting in their grids. Certain things are unpluralizable and that is one of them. Other than those answers, though, the grid is relatively free of cringe and ugh.
• 35A: Receiving end? (GEE) — the "end" of the word "Receiving" is the letter "g" (GEE). If you do a lot of cryptic crosswords (guilty), this one was transparent. 
• 33A: Shepherd's warning (GROWL) — when the shepherd is particularly drunk and surly .... or German.
• 6D: Whiskey distiller's mixture (SOUR MASH) — another one that I liked, but then I like whiskey. And whisky. And bourbon. Brown. I like the brown. I keep waiting for the term MASHBILL to appear in the grid ("The mash bill of a whisky is the grain combination used when making multigrain spirits such as bourbons. Unlike single malt these do not consist of a single grain, but are instead produced using a mixture of different grains such as corn, rye, wheat and barley" (Whiskipedia).
• 25A: "My Old ___" (2024 coming-of-age film) ("ASS") — this was a lovely, funny, sad, bittersweet movie. Well worth seeing. Aubrey Plaza is magical.

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*kealoa = a pair of words (normally short, common answers) that can be clued identically and that share at least one letter in common (in the same position). These are answers you can't just fill in quickly because two or more answers are viable, Even With One or More Letters In Place. From the classic [Mauna ___] KEA/LOA conundrum. See also, e.g. [Heaps] => ATON or ALOT, ["Git!"] => "SHOO" or "SCAT," etc.    

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Like the ending of a typical rom-com / FRI 2-7-25 / Oil, slangily / "Parasite" actor ___ Woo-shik / Tree with red berrylike fruit / Popular mode of transport in Dhaka / Some sources of typhus? / Bunton, a.k.a. Baby Spice / First English football club to win the European Cup, informally

Constructor: Kelly Morenus

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: None 

Word of the Day: BURSAR (46A: Campus figure) —

A bursar (derived from bursa, Latin for 'purse') is a professional administrator in a school or university often with a predominantly financial role. In the United States, bursars usually hold office only at the level of higher education (two-year and four-year colleges and universities) or at private secondary schools. In Australia, the United Kingdom and other countries, bursars are common at other levels of education. (wikipedia)

• • •

[PREDICTABLE!]

Played like a Saturday, especially at first, when I made a sweep of the entire top part of the grid and came up with ... virtually nothing. A chemical suffix? Ugh. ENE? ANE? (turns out it's INE—note, this is *not* the kind of "work" that makes solving crosswords fun). RINDS, DEER, TVCOPS, BLUE ... all of these could easily have been other things. Maya LIN was the only certainty in the grid after my first pass at the Downs. And then I had to remember an actor name, which I couldn't (CHOI). Finally, I got the very easy CPR, then RINSE, PRAWN, POWDER, and off I went, though not quickly. Never with that Friday Whoosh I'm always looking for. There was sporadic whooshing, but never of the truly exhilarating type. The cluing was really holding back my enjoyment today, in a big way. Let's start with the worst clue, from my perspective as a broad-minded movie lover: 1A: Like the ending of a typical rom-com (PREDICTABLE). I would never have expected the puzzle to have such a sneering attitude toward rom-coms. Slightly surprised to see a woman's name on the byline, as honestly that kind of sneering, dismissive *&$% is far, far more indicative of a man who pointedly proudly and smugly doesn't watch rom-coms (or calls them "chick flicks") (maybe the clue was an editorial decision, who knows?). It's such a weird, weak, judgmental, ignorant, and (because rom-coms are primarily aimed at women) sexist take, and it's not even true. Or ... at least it's hard to either prove or falsify. Are rom-com endings PREDICTABLE? Are they any more PREDICTABLE than the "typical" endings of literally any other genre?? Most movies are bad and boring and FORMULAIC. Reflexive denigration of the rom-com specifically is some Awful Movie Guy stuff, so I'm very surprised to see it here (in a puzzle not made by a guy). 

And, like, did a very embittered editor write this puzzle? Rom-coms are PREDICTABLE, other plots are unoriginal or FORMULAIC. And then ... [Murder she wrote?], question mark? As if the clue's not sure. Like, really? She calls herself a CRIME NOVELIST? (rolls eyes, exclaims "posh!"). The "?" makes the voice sound dubious. That clue was awfully confusing (12A: Murder she wrote?), since it seems like the answer should refer to "Murder" (i.e. the CRIME) not the "she" (i.e. the NOVELIST) who "wrote" the "murder." (Note: that clue/answer was actually one of the highlights of the solve, but it's still a little wobbly/messy—I just like remembering Angela Lansbury). 

The middle and bottom parts weren't nearly as tough for me, probably because the top gave me good momentum that I never really lost, but there were still tougher-than-usual moments. 22D: Some sources of typhus? Some sources of typhus? How many are there? How much of my day do you think I spend going "hey, what are the sources of typhus? I wonder if I can name all the sources of typhus? Or  maybe just a quick half dozen." It's like the world's worst party game: name the typhus sources. I barely know what typhus is, and can name literally zero sources. So LICE was a complete surprise. I'm sure it's correct, but "Some sources," LOL, like I have a vast store to pick from. I Have No Store. Make your clue more LICE-like, more LICE-specific, please. Had to reach back for a Spice Girl EMMA (35A: ___ Bunton, a.k.a. Baby Spice), why, there are so many EMMAs! PERK could easily have been PLUS (23D: Benefit). And oof, RESULTS, why was that so hard? (34D: They may be guaranteed ... "or your money back") Probably because I had REBATES and REFUNDS in there (the latter of which really killed me since it had the "U," which was "confirmed" by MAN. U. (i.e. Manchester United) (45A: First English football club to win the European Cup, informally). REFUNDS also had me staring down "Wild -EFT" (38A: Wild ___). Brain tried really hard to justify "Wild LEFT," and then gave up. Ended up with an error because BURSAR is spelled so ridiculously (I had BURSOR, which still looks right, and anyway, I've been on campuses for decades and never once though of the BURSAR). The bottom of this grid was flowier than the top. ON A REGULAR BASIS is nice, and I like FREEHAND as well, but otherwise, this grid didn't have enough highs, enough real marquee answers, for a late-week themeless. It was also locked up with Saturday cluing that was also kind of boring cluing. I don't mind the challenge (puzzles have been running way too easy, of late), but I wish the cluing had been more on point, and the overall experience had been more exciting.

[Yes, every time I watch this perfect movie ending, I think, "meh, PREDICTABLE"]

Bullets:

• 21A: Site where a previously unidentified species of sea urchin was discovered in 2004 (EBAY) — this paragraph-long clue made my eyes glaze over. Why waste so much real estate on this when there are so many other dull short clues you could be punching up? It's a long way to go for [yet more crosswordese].
• 13D: Oil, slangily (TEXAS TEA) — sigh, "slangily" is trying to convince you that the phrase TEXAS TEA was ever uttered by anyone anywhere (since the early '60s) outside the context of the theme song from The Beverly Hillbillies.

• 
  51A: Sets off mayhem (CAUSES A RIOT) — we're in borderline EAT A SANDWICH territory here, but I like this phrase, mainly because it reminds me of Book VII of the Aeneid, which I taught earlier in the week. See, in Book VII, after Virgil turns once again to the Muses to give him assistance with his work, which has now entered its second half (Nunc age, qui reges, ERATO [...]") (40D: Muse with a lyre)., we watch as Aeneas tries to offer himself as groom for King Latinus's daughter, Lavinia, which Latinus assents to, but then Juno, who hates Aeneas and wants him to fail at everything, decides to blow **** up, and so sends the Fury Allecto down to ensure that both Amata (Lavinia's mom, the queen) and Turnus (Lavinia's would-be husband) are sufficiently furious at this "foreigner" Aeneas trying to sneak in here and take their girl (Lavinia). Long story short, Allecto shoots a snake into the breast of Amata, which makes her blaze with passionate anger, which she takes out into the streets ... her anguished public protest effectively CAUSES A RIOT, as all the mothers of Latium come out to join her in a Bacchic frenzy of "Hell no! Down with Trojans! No foreigners for our daughters!" Not very welcoming of outsiders, these Latins. Anyway, ERATO x/w CAUSES A RIOT was a real highlight for me, specifically, and perhaps exclusively.
• 43D: Campus figs. (SRS) — ugh, three "Campus figure(s)" clues, all in one tiny section of the grid. Awful, unpleasant. This one was the worst: SRS are a quarter of the damned campus, they hardly rise to the status of "figures."
• 9D: Down (BLUE) — did you know GLUM fits there too? Very well, actually. :(
• 34A: Popular mode of transport in Dhaka (RICKSHAW) — Never been to Dhaka, so I wouldn't know, but hard to think of any other "mode of transport" that ends in -SHAW (which is what I had in place before I ever saw the clue).

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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1781 Mozart opera seria / SAT 10-21-23 / 1998 rap hit by Big Pun (feat. Joe) / Cocktail fruta / Astronaut Cooper informally / Magazine that originated the words "payola" and "striptease" / Bandmate of Keith and Brian / Haka dance performers

Constructor: Kelly Morenus

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: "IDOMENEO" (5D: 1781 Mozart opera seria) —

Idomeneo, re di Creta ossia Ilia e Idamante (Italian for Idomeneus, King of Crete, or, Ilia and Idamante; usually referred to simply as Idomeneo, K. 366) is an Italian-language opera seria by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The libretto was adapted by Giambattista Varesco from a French text by Antoine Danchet, based on a 1705 play by Crébillion père, which had been set to music by André Campra as Idoménée in 1712. Mozart and Varesco were commissioned in 1780 by Karl Theodor, Elector of Bavaria for a court carnival. He probably chose the subject, though it may have been Mozart. The work premiered on 29 January 1781 at the Cuvilliés Theatre in Munich, Germany. (wikipedia) ///  King Idomeneo is returning from his victory in the Trojan war when a great storm destroys his ship. Desperate to save his own life, he begs the god Neptune to spare him, and Neptune asks him for a sacrifice in return: the first living person that Idomeneo sees when he reaches the shore. // Back in Crete, reports of the wreckage of his father’s ship have brought Idamante to the sea’s edge to see if his father is alive. A fatal reunion on the shore seals Idamante’s fate. His own father must sacrifice him to appease the god of the sea. // Nothing can prevent this destiny. Sending Idamante away will not work, as he would have to travel by sea. Impatient for his sacrifice, Neptune sends a great monster to attack the people of Crete and force Idomeneo to fulfil his oath. Only the pure heart of Princess Ilia can prevent the fatal blow from striking Idamante, as love and innocent triumph over all. (stageagent dot com) 

• • •

I thought the bottom stack—in fact, the bottom in general—was really strong on this one. I especially liked the very current "TAKE MY MONEY!" underneath and counterbalancing the more formal and perhaps more sober DISCRETIONARY spending. The juxtaposition makes DISCRETIONARY seem almost admonitory. 

A: [Points to pink box on top shelf] "I want that!" 

B: [Looks disapproving, removes monocle] "Hmm, perhaps you should use some discretion when considering how y—" 

A: [Turns to cashier] "TAKE MY MONEY!" 

B: [Sputters] "Now see here, DON'T INTERRUPT ME. We've been having some budgetary shortfalls of late and I just—"

A: [Holds pink box aloft] "Too late, Diamond-Eyes Barbie is mine, Mine, hahahahahaha" [runs wildly through Tiffany's] [end scene]

As for the rest of the puzzle, it was solid enough, but a little on the wan side (!), and a little too reliant on proper nouns for its difficulty. The only obstacles in my way today were names, which made them stand out. Astronauts aren't nearly the names they used to be when I was a child, so I honestly didn't know GORDO (39A: Astronaut Cooper, informally). Wikipedia says he was the "youngest of the seven original astronauts in Project Mercury," which covered 1958-63. I was born in 1969, so I missed him. It's the 1969 astronauts I know. The only ones I ever heard about for the longest time. So GORDO was tough. Then there was "STILL NOT A PLAYER," which a. I can't believe I don't know—I was actually paying attention to music in 1998, how embarrassing—and b. I can't believe spells "PLAYER" with an "-ER" (14A: 1998 rap hit by big Pun (feat. Joe)). Feels very un-rappy. I resisted PLAYER for a few beats because the spelling seemed too ... let's say, standard. But that title was inferable, ultimately. I've seen that How to Be an Antiracist guy's name in bookstores all over hell and gone, and I could've told you IBRAM, his exact last name seems to have eluded me (24D: Ibram X. ___, author of "How to Be an Antiracist" => KENDI). This led to the most unfortunate possible puzzle finale today, as the last thing I entered was the second "N" in WANNEST, which has to be the WANNEST word I've ever seen (30A: Least robust-looking). Oof. Who is doing Comparative Wan Studies, such that this word would ever be uttered? Somehow, that second "N" is a tolerable phenomenon in a word like TANNEST, but with the vowel sound in WAN ... the whole superlative adjectival enterprise just seems absurd

[This is fantastic, how did I miss it!? Stupid grad school...]

But so far these are just a few names, the kind you'd find in any Saturday. Where's the problem? Well, there's the fact that the names keep coming—so many of them from one narrow cultural arena: music. In addition to the Big Pun (feat. Joe) song, there's Chick COREA, MICK Jagger, Brooks & DUNN, FATS Domino, and then the one musical answer that seemed truly unfair. Like, intentionally cruel to all non-opera lovers (and non-opera knower-abouters). That answer is, of course, "IDOMENEO" (5D: 1781 Mozart opera seria). If you don't know the opera, those letters are totally uninferable, and while most of the crosses are fair, there is one that is not only not fair, but that seems designed to send you to Natick* City without passing Go (a horrible fate). Attics are, famously, conventionally, paradigmatically, DUSTY. If there's one thing I know about attics, it's that they might have a WEB or two in them ... and then there's the dust. Now, "IDOMENEO" just sounds more plausible to my ears than "IDODENEO," but there's absolutely no definitive way for someone not familiar with that Mozart title (i.e. many, many solvers) to make that M/D decision without guessing. That's just ... bad. This is the clue's fault, not the answer's. There are mustier ways to clue MUSTY, and in the interest of fairness, that's the direction they should've gone. I wonder if people are going to get "IDODENEO"'d today in anything like the way they got KATNAK'd earlier this week.

So the proper nouns are overly plentiful, they run in too narrow a category (overwhelmingly music), and at least one of them is trying to murder you. Outside of that, the grid is solid (with the bottom section being the highlight), and solving it provided a proper Saturday workout. 

Some notes:

• 26A: World Trade ___ (fixture of Hong Kong or Toronto) (CENTRE) — bizarre clue. Why would you want to evoke the (actually famous, destroyed by terrorists) WTC this way? I guess it's ... interesting? ... that there are others, but this clue clanked for me. 
• 40A: Cocktail fruta (PIÑA) — who doesn't love "strained pineapple"!?

• 28D: Tech support? (MONOPOD) — no idea what this is. I assume it is a relative of the bi- and tripod. And it holds ... tech? Of some sort? "A one-legged support for a camera or fishing rod" (!). Now I have the "Andy Griffith" theme in my head for some reason.

• 42D: Bandmate of Keith and Brian (MICK) — I wrote in PETE. As in Townshend. Of The Who. "Oh, Keith Moon, got it!" Nope. 
• 46D: Joey of children's literature (ROO) — Thus concludes ROO Week at the NYTXW... (when was that, yesterday? The day before? They blur together ... (it was Thursday))
• 35D: Bleak (WINTRY) — so weird to me (still) that we lose the "E" when adjectivizing that season. It's not SUMMRY! (oh god, is it SUMMRY? ... so, phew, definitely SUMMERY ... thank you for enduring my SUMMRY v. SUMMERY summary).  

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

*For a definition of "Natick,” see sidebar of this blog

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