Its famous holes are formed by propionibacteria / SUN 11-1-26 / Repeated words in the chorus of "Sweet Child o' Mine" / Titular fictional heroine from the Alps / Pitch raisers for guitarists / Condition that may be treated with C.B.T. / Beethoven work originally titled "Bonaparte" / Symbol for a stop on a subway map / Roald Dahl title character who subsists on "snozzcumbers," with "the" / Payment inits. found in "debt-free" / Member of the largest contiguous empire in history

Constructor: Kevin Curry and Zhou Zhang

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "Be Amazed" — the grid ends up being a visual representation of a LABRAT maze, with "CHEESE" (in a single square) at the end of the maze route. Shaded squares in theme answers form hidden (i.e. unclued) obstacles that the rat has to maneuver around on its way to the cheese. Also on the way to the cheese—circled letters spelling out the title of a "1998 book": WHO MOVED MY [Cheese]?

There are puzzle notes:

Theme answers:

• OBSTACLE COURSE (30A: Appetizers, entree or dessert)
• ROOM DIVIDER (15D: Unit in the game Clue)
• STONEWALL (69A: Slingshot ammo)
• BARRIER REEF (67D: Many a shipwreck site)
• INVISIBLE FENCE (99A: Out of sight)

Word of the Day: Who Moved My Cheese?  —

Who Moved My Cheese? An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life is a 1998 motivational business fable by Spencer Johnson about change in work and life. The book is written as a parable about two mice and two "Littlepeople" during their hunt for cheese. A New York Times business bestseller upon release, Who Moved My Cheese? remained on the list for almost five years and spent over 200 weeks on Publishers Weekly's hardcover nonfiction list. As of 2018, it has sold almost 30 million copies worldwide in 37 languages and remains one of the best-selling business books. In November 2018, it was followed by a sequel called Out of the Maze. [...] In the corporate environment, management has been known to distribute this book to employees during times of "structural reorganization", or during cost-cutting measures, in an attempt to portray unfavorable or unfair changes in an optimistic or opportunistic way. This has been characterized by Barbara Ehrenreich in her book Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America as an attempt by organizational management to make employees quickly and unconditionally assimilate management ideals, even if they may prove detrimental to them professionally. Ehrenreich called the book "the classic of downsizing propaganda" and summarizes its message as "the dangerous human tendencies to 'overanalyze' and complain must be overcome for a more rodentlike approach to life. When you lose a job, just shut up and scamper along to the next one."

• • •

Hello from Halloween central—it's currently prime trick-or-treating hours (Saturday night, 10-31-26), and I'm up here trying to get the first part of blogging done so I can then go back downstairs and hand out candy to kiddies and finish watching Psycho (an annual tradition). Speaking of Psycho—I laughed out loud when I hit EROICA (which may be the only time that has ever happened or is ever likely to happen) (113A: Beethoven work originally titled "Bonaparte"), since that is the record that Marion's sister Lila finds on Norman Bates's turntable when she's wandering the Bates mansion looking for evidence of what happened to her sister—before Norman catches on that she's in there, runs up there from the motel, quickly changes into "Mother's" clothes, and then tries to kill Lila in the fruit cellar (I've seen this movie a Lot):

Unlike Psycho, or having your house beset by literally hundreds of trick-or-treaters because it's a beautiful Saturday night and you live in a very walkable and trick-or-treatable neighborhood, this puzzle wasn't very scary. I finished it with almost no trouble, despite the fact that I didn't really understand what I was supposed to be seeing, and I certainly have never read the book Who Moved My Cheese? So disappointed to read the puzzle notes and see that the puzzle was based on a "1998 book," only to have that book be some business book (?). I remember it being Very popular, but it seemed like some kind of businessy self-help something-or-other, so all I really know about it is the title. Really wanted the "1998 book" to be some kind of kid's book or some fantasy novel about a LAB RAT ... but no. Business book. Maybe if I'd read the book, the puzzle would've been more fun to solve. I guess the idea of hunting for cheese in a maze is key to the "ideas" of the book? Shrug. I admire the architecture of this one, and I really like the way the various obstacles were handled—formally unclued, but visually clued just fine, i.e. the clue for OBSTACLE COURSE points only to "COURSE" (30A: Appetizers, entree or dessert), but since you know you're dealing with a lab rat, the idea that those shaded squares represent barriers of some kind makes sense, especially after you piece together the first one or two. The whole maze conceit didn't gel for me visually at all, though, until the app did the work for me at the end, showing me the rat, drawing the rat's course through the grid, etc. So the "Aha" moment felt forced—like, I said "Aha," but only as the result of a post-solve visual representation, not as a result of figuring anything out myself. Disappointing in that regard. Clearly this puzzle literally wasn't for me (as I know nothing about this book), but I could still appreciate what the constructors were trying to do.

The fill must've been fine because I don't recall cringing much. Maybe I was just going too fast to notice. Crossing REHEAR with REDEALT is maybe not the most elegant moment. But aside from a smattering of crosswordese, the fill by and large seems fine. I didn't get hung up anywhere except the Taylor Swift song—I can hear the quoted lyric in my head, with the right cadence and notes and everything, but it's like a snippet that exists out of context (14D: Taylor Swift hit with the lyric" You got that James Dean daydream look in your eye"). I kept trying to follow it to some kind of recognizable chorus, but: no dice. If you'd given me a list of one-word title options, I doubt I could've told you the title was "STYLE." In fact, I know I couldn't have. Maybe if it was a multiple-choice test and the options were A. "Fun" B. "Run" C. "Jump" D. "Style" E. "Power" ... maybe. 


Bullets:

• 12A: Repeated words in the chorus of "Sweet Child o' Mine" (OHS) — one of my favorite moments of the solve, as I kept singing the song to myself, trying to figure out exactly what the "chorus" was, looking for a sequence of "words" that was repeated ... only to discover it's just the one "word," "OH," said over and over again. I think that besides "Sweet child o' mine" and a smattering of "ooh"s and "yeah"s, the "OHS" are the *only* words in the chorus. Let's find out.

• 26A: Roald Dahl title character who subsists on "snozzcumbers," with "the" (BFG) — I never read this, so all I ever remember about the title is that it's three (to me) random letters that are something like "B.F.D." (big f***ing deal). Is the title character a gnome? Does BFG stand for big F***ing Gnome? ... [checks] ... I mean, close: Big Friendly Giant.

• 59A: Payment inits. found in "debt-free" (EBT) — also found in ... "debt." Weird clue. Is the idea that when you use EBT you do not incur debt (because it's a government benefits program)? Still a weird clue.
• 73A: Greek goddess whose chariot is pulled by Firebright and Daybright (EOS) — three letters, ends in "S," Greek goddess—I don't really need to read the rest of the clue, although I am surprised to find that a Greek goddess has horses with names that make them sound like Care Bears or My Little Ponies (the latter is probably more apt).
• 12D: Condition that may be treated with C.B.T. (OCD) — am I supposed to just know what "C.B.T." is? Oh wait, is it Cognitive Behavioral Therapy!? Ha ha, bingo! EBT! CBT! BFG! OCD!

• 18D: Symbol for a stop on a subway map (DOT) — one of the hardest clues for me. "Symbol" had me thinking something much more ... symbolic. But it's just a DOT. Which is, technically, a "symbol," I guess. But it's not like a dog or an owl or a little house or even a star ... something more picturesque, which is what *I* was picturing.
• 31D: "___ your heart!" ("BLESS") — first guess, before I'd properly assessed the length of the answer or anything:

• 93D: ___ Arbor (ANN) — outside of the general NYC area, the crosswordingest cities in the U.S., judging by my correspondence / supporters, are Minneapolis/St. Paul and ANN Arbor. Pound for pound, it might be ANN Arbor. It's possible other cities have a lot of solvers and they're just solving other crosswords. Or people in those cities just don't care for me, who can say?

That's all for today. See you next time. And happy November (the best month)

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. the latest episode of "Crosstalk" (a crossword construction podcast hosted by Daniel Grinberg) features a charming and insightful interview with Zhou Zhang (half of today's husband/wife construction team). Highly recommended. Available wherever you get your podcasts.

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Letterboxd]
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Citrus-based sauce in Japanese cuisine / WED 6-24-26 / Retro kind of hairstyle / Pinkglow pineapples and GloFish, for short / Marketing team's goal with a new product launch, informally / Hand-held radios used by the speakers of the italicized clues and their answers? / Important creatures in Inuit culture / Band whose spelled-out name translates to "Bulletproof Boy Scouts"

Constructor: Kevin Curry and Zhou Zhang

Relative difficulty: Medium (and then some?)

THEME: WALKIE-TALKIES (36A: Hand-held radios used by the speakers of the italicized clues and their answers?) — familiar phrases that contain walkie-talkie lingo, clued as if they were, in fact, responses on a walkie-talkie:

Theme answers:

• "JOLLY, ROGER!" (17A: "Sleigh's loaded and ready! How are you feeling, Santa?")
• "GLAZED, OVER!" (25A: "I'm at the bakery—what kind of doughnut do you want?")
  "CARBON, COPY!" (49A: "What's tomorrow's chemistry exam about again?")
• "CHICKEN, OUT!" (60A: "Before you go, what animal crosses the road in that old joke?")

Word of the Day: RAMONA Shelburne (46D: Sportswriter Shelburne) —

Ramona Leor Shelburne (born July 19, 1979) is an American sportswriter and NBA Insider for ESPN. She is also a former softball player; in high school, she was the 1997 L.A. City Softball Co-Player of the Year, and in college she played outfield for Stanford Cardinal for four years. [...] Prior to joining ESPN, Shelburne spent seven years at the Los Angeles Daily News as a reporter and columnist from 2002-2009. At ESPN, Ramona gained a national following writing about Frank and Jaime McCourt's divorce and the 2010-2011 Los Angeles Dodgers ownership dispute. On February 14, 2016, Shelburne made her radio debut in a national radio show called Beadle & Shelburne which she co-hosts with ESPN SportsNation host Michelle Beadle. // Since the mid 2010s, Shelburne has been a Senior Writer at ESPN. She also regularly contributes to the network’s NBA coverage on NBA Today, ESPN Radio and SportsCenter. (wikipedia)

• • •

I should probably start with the one thing about the theme that seems off. I don't talk on WALKIE-TALKIES much (or ever), but aren't "Roger!" and "Copy!" things you say at the *beginning* of your response? Like, you don't wait until after you say something to say "Roger!," do you? Is that ... realistic? "Over!" and "Out!" (and "Over and out!") are definitely response-ending bits of W-T speak, but somehow having "Roger!" and "Copy!" at the *ends* of their respective phrases feels less than authentic. But somehow I didn't need authenticity today because the power of wackiness compelled me. Like, the theme was just so cute and original that I managed not to care about a little syntactical strangeness here and there. The revealer was completely unnecessary, as I knew after the first, and certainly after the second, themer that I was dealing with radio lingo, but WALKIE-TALKIES is such a bouncy and bright and "K"-ful central answer that I didn't resent its presence. It's pleasantly decorative, even if it isn't (or wasn't, for me) necessary to figuring out the theme concept. I have often said about wackiness-based themes that they have to Go Big or Go Home, and I thought this one leaned into the silliness plenty. The fact that I start out this conversation talking to Santa puts things on real wacky ground right away. The remaining clues maybe could have been wackier, but if you imagine that you're talking to Santa the whole time, then wackiness abides. I totally believe that Santa wants a donut. I'm not sure I believe that he's in your Chemistry class, but I *want* to believe it. I absolutely don't believe you, or anyone, forgot which animal crosses the road, but again, the absurdity makes it work. 

I also appreciated how spicy the fill was. PICANTE, even. Lots of tastiness everywhere you turn, from SPUN cotton candy and LemonADE to OAT milk and TARTs and some kind of OLIVE + PECAN + CHICKEN + HAM + FAVA bean (+ PEPA!) concoction at the bottom of the grid—with PONZU sauce (65A: Citrus-based sauce in Japanese cuisine). PONZU!? Is that a debut? Yup, it sure is. We used to put that in / on lots of things. Not sure why we stopped. Maybe we're just on PONZU hiatus. It's tasty! NOM NOM NOM. Anyway, this is a real OMNIVORE's puzzle. GOOD EATS abound (12D: A satisfying meal, informally). I also liked the fact that I finished the puzzle on "WE MADE IT!" Couldn't have scripted it any better. The puzzle gets pretty name-y at times, esp. through the middle (ZARA / BTS / ERIC Carle / Paul SIMON / MRS. Brown and her lovely daughter). I think lots of people are going to blank on RAMONA Shelburne in the SE corner, which already has the never-before-seen PONZU, and the unexpected and weird-to-parse PRBUZZ in it (47D: Marketing team's goal with a new product launch, informally). I can see some solvers struggling there. But I didn't find the name-iness excessive today. But then again, there were no names I didn't know. Always easier to like names when you know them. Oh, NESS, I guess I didn't *really* know that name, but the "Van" part kind of gave me a boost ("Van NESS" just sounded familiar—I grew up in a city with a Van NESS Avenue, so maybe that helped).

I actually found the NW corner a little thorny. I accept Venmo (wink) and I've used Venmo to pay people but I guess I've never made (or accepted) a Venmo "request" for payment, so PAYS (5D: Approves a Venmo request, perhaps) ... seemed right, but I wasn't sure about it. I also wasn't sure about NO LESS, which fits the clue fine, it's just ... rarer than plain old [Equally], and seems more situation-specific (like something you say after you've added something to your previous statement—almost like an emphatic conclusion). So my brain just had some contextual trouble. The biggest problem up there, though, was that clue on PIN-UP (1A: Retro kind of hairstyle). What? There's a hair style called "PIN-UP?" Is pinning your hair up "retro?" That clue seemed like a desperate way to avoid the cheesecake angle. A PIN-UP is, of course, a picture of a sexy model featured in magazines and calendars. Men (typically) would pin these pictures up for display in various locker-room and bar and other male-dominated environments. Popularized sometime around WWII, I think. It's objectifying, the way most modeling is, but I really love good mid-century PIN-UP art. There's some in our downstairs bathroom! The art form has its Grand Masters (Vargas! Elvgren!). "Retro kind of hairstyle" evokes nothing for me. [Does some image searching] Oh, hey ... weird, apparently the hairstyle in question is actually related to PIN-UP models, in that everything I'm seeing online has a real throwback vibe—hair that a PIN-UP model might've had in the '40s. Unsurprisingly, modern trends in women's hair ... not on my radar. 

[Betty Grable, the most famous PIN-UP girl]

Bullets:

• 6A: Pinkglow pineapples and GloFish, for short (GMOS) — another reason the top of the puzzle was a little on the hard side for me. Shouldn't this clue have a "for instance" in it. Like, these are examples of GMOS. You wouldn't clue CAT as merely [Siamese]. You'd write [Siamese, for one]. But leaving that cluing convention nitpickery aside, I had no idea what I was looking at here. I thought maybe Pokémons. Or some kind of reward in some kind of game on some kind of app I'm never going to use.
• 44A: Fish with a Kohaku variety (KOI) — sticking with fish for a moment ... I had no idea there were varieties of KOI. I mean, of course there are, I'm not surprised, I've just never been required to think beyond the simple fact of KOI, crossworld's favorite fish (sorry, MAHI MAHI, you lose).
• 1D: Kind of pants worn on a rainy day, perhaps (PAJAMA) — ??? because you are staying inside, in your pajamas? I can tell you that my students will wear PAJAMA pants (as in pajama bottoms) in any weather. Just ... out and about. Regular-ass streetwear to them (well, some of them). They're probably least likely to wear them on rainy days, but that's because (unlike you, apparently) they are wearing them out of doors.

• 10D: Workout program that's a portmanteau of two different sports (TAE BO) — in the '90s, Billy Blanks made history by combining sports that scientists had previously thought uncombinable: Tae Kwon Do and Bowling. The rest is home exercise history.
• 39D: A little foxy? (KIT) — a baby fox is a kit. "Little foxy" is something I would call a fox if I saw one in the wild. "Oh, hello, little foxy, what are you up to? Killing rodents! Nice!" (really witnessed this once, very cool) (also witnessed fox kits once, even cooler).

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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Kinkajou cousin / THU 4-23-26 / Experience deep affirmation, in modern lingo / Media exec Sarandos / Lack of pulchritude / Follower of open or closed, sartorially / Owie kissers, perhaps

Constructor: Zhou Zhang and Kevin Curry

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: HAND-ME-DOWN (11D: Something that's kept in the family ... or a hint to making sense of three pairs of answers in this puzzle) — in three columns, "ME" is literally passed down from the upper answer to the lower answer, so the upper answer is missing a "ME" and the lower answer has an extra "ME" (both answers still look like plausible words or phrases)

Theme answers:

• CENT / BEEF LOMEIN ("cement" and "beef loin") (3D: *Material for a sidewalk / 28D: *Choice cut)
• "SO WHAT?" / COME UPON ("somewhat" and "coupon") (6D: *To a degree / 37D: *Supermarket shopper's clipping)
• HOLINESS / POMELO ("homeliness" and "polo") (9D: *Lack of pulchritude / 44D: *Sport that uses mallets)

Word of the Day: "Immaculate Reception" (42A: What the "Music City Miracle" and the "Immaculate Reception" took place in => NFL GAMES) —

The Immaculate Reception is one of the most famous plays in the history of American football. It was a touchdown which occurred in the AFC divisional playoff game of the National Football League (NFL), between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Oakland Raiders at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on December 23, 1972.

With his team trailing 7–6, on fourth down with 22 seconds left in the game, Steelers quarterback Terry Bradshaw threw a pass targeting Steelers running back John Fuqua. The ball may have bounced off the helmet of Raiders safety Jack Tatum, although many observers believe that Tatum never contacted the pass. Steelers fullback Franco Harris caught it just before it hit the ground and ran for a game-winning touchdown. The play has been a source of much controversy and speculation ever since, with many contending that the ball touched only Fuqua (and did not in any way touch Tatum) or that it hit the ground before Harris caught it, either of which would have resulted in an incomplete pass by the rules of the time. Kevin Cook's The Last Headbangers cites the play as the beginning of a bitter rivalry between the Steelers and the Raiders that fueled a historically brutal Raiders team during the NFL's most controversially physical era.

NFL Films has chosen the Immaculate Reception as the greatest play of all time, as well as the most controversial. The play was also selected as the Greatest Play in NFL History in the NFL Network's 100 series. The play proved to be a turning point for the Steelers, reversing four decades of futility with their first playoff win ever; they went on to win four Super Bowls by the end of the 1970s. (wikipedia)

• • •

This was enjoyable. It took me through many stages of revelation—the first "oh!" came when I realized there were missing "ME"s up top. "Aha, a missing 'ME' puzzle. I wonder why they're missing?" Later, I couldn't figure out why adding "ME" to BEEF LOMEIN was getting me nowhere, when suddenly I realized, "Wait ... this answer has an added 'ME'—I wonder why the 'ME's are missing in the top half of the puzzle but added below?" And then finally (truly finally—with the last letters I put into the grid), I got the rationale with the perfectly descriptive revealer, HAND-ME-DOWN. I don't think I'd noticed to that point that the "ME" shenanigans was contained to just three columns—my brain was still processing things in terms of top half / bottom half. So the revealer did its job (made sense of the wackiness in a punny way) and got me that final (of 3) ahas in a real exclamation-point kind of way. Always nice when the puzzle sticks the landing. I have only one minor complaint about the theme execution—I don't like that there's a stray, unhanded-down "ME" there at the top of the grid, in MESS (13D: State of a playroom, often). All the other Down "ME"s in the grid (except the one in the revealer) get handed down, but that "ME" is just sitting up there, tenaciously, thumbing its nose at the theme. "Haha, ya missed me, turkeys! I'm clinging to the ceiling of this grid and there's not a damn thing you can do about it!" If you change PALE to HALO, you've still got a lovely grid and bye bye extra "ME"! I am well aware that the theme is supposed to apply *only* in the case of the three relevant columns (with asterisked clues), but I like an immaculate execution, where the theme stuff stays contained entirely in the theme stuff. No strays! But, as I say, this is a minor issue. By its own stated rules, the theme works quite well.

The fill is far less interesting, but I appreciated how (relatively) clean it was. Sure, there are a bunch of overcommon short answers, but hardly any of those are what I'd call truly grating. No ugly abbrevs. today, no hoary old names from crossword grids of yore. The short stuff stays relatively innocuous, which is what I like short stuff to do. And then you get a few longer answers in there that liven things up a bit. FEEL SEEN is great (29A: Experience deep affirmation, in modern lingo), and WINDOW SILL, PRIDE MONTH, BEST MAN, "IN OR OUT?," and "IF I MUST" are all really good. So if I gotta endure an EENIE here and an ATON there and a pair of crossing crosswordese brands in the NW corner (AVEENO, AVIA), so be it. It's fine. Small price to pay for an otherwise well-crafted puzzle. 

Outside the inevitable theme confusion, the puzzle was pretty dang easy. They could've toughened this one up a bit, I wouldn't have minded. I'm looking over my grid and not seeing any places where I got particularly bogged down or even slightly delayed. All my problems came (predictably) very early, in that NW corner, where I wrote in NAIF instead of FAWN to start with (1D: Babe in the woods), and then tripped all over the missing-"ME" answers for a bit (two of them in that corner alone!). I had a little trouble remembering what a kinkajou was, so I briefly considered that its cousin might be a KOALA, and not a COATI. Now there's a crossword animal: COATI! I think of it as a South American raccoon. They're basically little fox-bear-cat-rats:

You can find them next to the OKAPI in the Crossword Zoo. Anyway, besides my brief flirtation with KOALA, I don't think I had any non-thematic missteps today. Basic basic, all around. Are there any interesting clues to talk about? Let's see ...

Bullets:

• 4D: Media exec Sarandos (TED) — no one wants to see a "media exec" in their puzzle, come on. Choose a better TED! (this one is co-CEO of Netflix)

• 17A: Spot for a catnap? (WINDOWSILL) — this "?" wasn't "?"-y enough. When you live with cats who nap in WINDOWSILLs every chance they get, well, this clue just doesn't have the misdirection force that it seems to want.

[OK he's not actually *in* the sill, but ... close]

• 36A: Follower of open or closed, sartorially (TOED) — I cannot honestly say that I like the answer TOED, but I do like this clue, a lot. It's elegant. I think I just enjoy the word "sartorially." This clue is well-dressed—classy—and I appreciate it.
• 41A: Queen's collaborator on the 1981 hit "Under Pressure" (BOWIE) — I would've said BOWIE's collaborator was Freddy Mercury, but of course it's his whole band. This music video was a staple of early MTV, which means I've watched it countless times. A great song.

• 9D: *Lack of pulchritude (HO[me]LINESS) — Came at this from underneath and despite knowing at that point that "ME"s were both disappearing from and squeezing into the answers for asterisked clues, I disregarded thematics entirely and wrote in UGLINESS with emphatic certainty. Lack of pulchritude is UGLINESS! It fit the clue so well! Perfectly, in fact! I love that "pulchritude" means beauty, since it is one of the ugliest words I've ever seen. It sounds like something you suffer from, not something you want. "What happened to Mary? I never see her any more." "Oh, she's sick. Doctors say it's pulchritude." "Oh no!" "Yeah, she never goes outside now, it's awful."
• 32D: Company that famously used the Beatles' "Revolution" in a 1987 TV commercial (NIKE) — at first I was like "Apple...?" but then I remembered. 1987 was the year I graduated high school / started college, and that commercial was, indeed, famous. First time a Beatles song was used in an advertisement. 

[God bless George Harrison and his doomed struggle against using Beatles songs to sell "brassieres and pork pies" LOL]

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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Thick, spiked outer covering? / WED 1-28-26 / Score points in Pac-Man, say / Casting rod? / Number indicating position: Abbr. / Arctic fishing shelter / Article of furniture on which a plate of oats might be set? / Walk from one coop to another? / Commoner, informally / Teenager's response to a dad joke / Dirk Nowitzki's longtime team, to fans

Constructor: Kevin Curry

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: Animal "S" shift — familiar compound or two-part terms and phrases involving animals are clued as possessive phrases—that is, you have to mentally take the "S" from the front of the second part of the base answer and affix it (with an apostrophe) to the end of the first part. The wacky possessive phrases are clued wackily ("?"-style):

Theme answers:

• HORSE'S TABLE (17A: Article of furniture on which a plate of oats might be set?) (from "horse stable")
• DRAGON'S LAYER (23A: Thick, spiked outer covering?) (from ... the movie Dragonslayer?)
• PIG'S KIN (37A: Relatives in a sty?) (from "pigskin")
• CAT'S CAN (39A: "Throne" for a lion king?) (from "CAT scan")
• CHICKEN'S TRIP (46A: Walk from one coop to another?) (from "chicken strip")
• TURTLE'S HELL (56A: Being flipped on its back, e.g.?)  (from "turtle shell")

Word of the Day: DRAGONSLAYER (see 23A) —

Dragonslayer is a 1981 American dark fantasy film directed by Matthew Robbins from a screenplay he co-wrote with Hal Barwood. It stars Peter MacNicol in his feature film debut, Ralph Richardson, John Hallam, and Caitlin Clarke. It was a co-production between Paramount Pictures and Walt Disney Productions, where Paramount handled North American distribution and Disney handled international distribution through Buena Vista International. The story is set in a fictional medieval kingdom where a young wizard encounters challenges as he hunts a dragon, Vermithrax Pejorative.

It is the second joint production between Paramount and Disney, after Popeye (1980), and is more mature than most contemporary Disney films. Because the audience expected the film to be solely children's entertainment, the violence, adult themes and brief nudity were somewhat controversial, though Disney did not hold the North American distribution rights. The film was rated PG in the U.S. Like The Black Hole (1979), the version of the film broadcast on the Disney Channel was edited to remove two scenes.

The special effects were created at Industrial Light and Magic, the first use of ILM outside of a Lucasfilm production. Phil Tippett had co-developed an animation technique there for The Empire Strikes Back (1980) called go motion, a variation on stop motion. This led to the film's nomination for the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, but it lost to Raiders of the Lost Ark, the only other visual effects nominee that year, whose special effects were also provided by ILM. Including the hydraulic 40-foot (12 m) model, the dragon consists of 16 puppets dedicated to flying, crawling, or breathing fire.

The film received generally positive reviews from critics, but it performed poorly at the box office, grossing $14.1 million worldwide against a production budget of $18 million. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Score, which went to Chariots of Fire. It was nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, again given to Raiders of the Lost Ark. (wikipedia)

• • •

If nothing else, this puzzle has inspired me to watch DRAGONSLAYER (1981). Despite being the target audience for this thing (12-year-olds who were into Dungeons & Dragons, Star Wars, and video games), I somehow missed it completely. It came out the same year as Raiders, so I was probably too busy seeing that five or six times. Anyway, 45 years later I think I am in exactly the right frame of mind to watch a movie featuring a puppet dragon called Vermithrax Pejorative. That's its surname! Pejorative! Amazing. Sounds bad! Anyway, thanks for the time travel, puzzle. Now I've got a new movie for my already extensive Watchlist. As for the rest of this puzzle, it seemed rudimentary and dull to me, and lacked a clear conceptual cohesiveness. Why animals? Why is one of the animals imaginary? Why is one of the animals (cat) not an animal at all in its base phrase (CAT scan), while all the other animals remain animals on both sides of the "S" switch? I kept waiting for the revealer that never came—give me a reason to be doing any of this. What's the gag? The whole "S"-shift thing feels very very Very old-fashioned. Like, I've seen variations of this specific kind of wackiness a lot before. Feels very '90s-coded, this kind of rudimentary wordplay. The clues are trying valiantly to make it all fun—toilets for lions, pig family reunions—but ultimately the wackiness all seemed pretty tepid. And then the fill was bland, with a tired short stuff—LOS LAS ORD ADE ECO EMO etc. The bottom is particularly grim, with a whole stack of things I'd rather not see (a turtle being tortured on top of AD FEES on top of a DESPOT). I would not say this puzzle is "SO LAME," but then I would never use that phrase since disabled people I knew got me to stop using "lame" as a general pejorative decades ago. Speaking of Pejorative, I gotta wrap this up so I can go watch DRAGONSLAYER! (Actually, I gotta work today, but later, for sure!)

This one was fairly color-by-numbers, right from the jump, with the gimme AÇAI allowing me to toggle to Downs and tick them all off in order. Repeat same thing with MEDUSA. The only resistance today, outside the semi-wacky theme answers, was in the cluing for a handful of the short clues. POWER had a tricky "?" clue (13D: Outlet store?—because an "outlet" is where POWER is "stored"). For some reason CLIPS took me a few crosses to get (46D: Assortment to view on YouTube)—I think of myself as watching videos, not CLIPS (which, to me, are parts of larger filmed things), but ... fair enough. Had SLINK before SKULK (33D: Sneak around)—just glad I didn't write in SNEAK there. Seems like something I'd do, especially if I was going too fast and not really paying attention. Second ORD in the past week, so that's ... bad. Had to wait on the "N" in SNARFS since it could so easily have been SCARFS (44D: Wolfs (down)). But this is all ordinary difficulty—the kind of vagueness and misdirection you might find on any day. Very mild. Mostly this one just seemed boring. Not POOR. Just blah.

Bullets:

• 5A: Monster whose gaze remained lethal after her death (MEDUSA) — I'd forgotten this. That 12yo who played D&D (but failed to see DRAGONSLAYER) probably knew this MEDUSA fact very well. I miss that kid.
• 40A: Arctic fishing shelter (ICE HUT) — that's where I.C.E. should go—to the ICE HUT! And then, you know, stay there. Til summer.
• 2D: Member-owned business (CO-OP) — yeah, I see you trying to make this a non-chicken answer, but this still looks exactly like "COOP," which is in your CHICKEN'S TRIP clue; I'd probably have tried to figure out a way to get rid of it (or, easier, just rewrite that CHICKEN'S TRIP clue (46A: Walk from one coop to another?)—there are way, way funnier ways to go at that one). 
• 30A: Casting rod? (WAND) — I'm telling you, 12yo me would've been really into crosswords if he'd known there were MEDUSAs and DRAGONSLAYERs and wizards with WANDs!). Ooh, and Pac-Man!! (6D: Score points in Pac-Man, say). You could've sold me on your adult pastime pretty easy, I think. 

That's it 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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