Accept defeat in modern parlance / THU 2-16-23 / Sketchy stranger in slang / Turkish city that lends its name to a species of rabbit cat and goat / Cousin Succession character / Nonbasic characteristic

Constructor: Kevin Patterson

Relative difficulty: Challenging / Easy (before you see the gimmick / after you see the gimmick)

THEME: TAKE THE L (1D: Accept defeat, in modern parlance ... or a hint to entering five answers in this puzzle) — the five L-shaped black-square configurations function as both letters ("L"s) and as conduits or paths, so that the theme answers, which start as Downs, end up as Acrosses: 

Theme answers:

• GRAMMAR PO(L)ICE (4D: Ones who don't want to hear that you're laying down on the job?) (the "L" come from the black-square configuration at the end of "GRAMMAR PO" and the "ICE" comes from 53A: It might give you the chills)
• FOOD CO(L)ORING (5D: Easter egg-making supply)
• NAI(L)ED IT (7D: Cry of triumph after a good performance)
• POT DEA(L)ERS (31D: Joint stockholders?)
• NUC(L)EAR (46D: Alternative to wind or solar)

Word of the Day: AVICII (10D: "Levels" D.J., 2011) —

Tim Bergling (Swedish: [ˈtɪmː ˈbæ̂rjlɪŋ] (listen); 8 September 1989 – 20 April 2018), known professionally as Avicii (/əˈviːtʃi/, Swedish: [aˈvɪ̌tːɕɪ]), was a Swedish DJ, remixer and music producer. At the age of 16, Bergling began posting his remixes on electronic music forums, which led to his first record deal. He rose to prominence in 2011 with his single "Levels". His debut studio album, True (2013), blended electronic music with elements of multiple genres and received generally positive reviews. It peaked in the top 10 in more than 15 countries and topped international charts; the lead single, "Wake Me Up", topped most music markets in Europe and reached number four in the United States. [...] Bergling retired from touring in 2016, after several years of stress and poor mental health. On 20 April 2018, he [died of] suicide while on holiday in Muscat, Oman. In 2019, his third and final album, Tim, was released posthumously.

• • •

Shameful how long it took me to see what was going on here. I had TAKE THE L early, as I assume a lot of people did (since it's in the NW), but ... I thought "L"s would be disappearing ... ? ... maybe ... ? ... I figured I could just plunge into the grid and somehow the meaning of "TAKE" would become clear. I did at some point notice that there were black-square "L"s in the grid, but I thought that was just a decorative touch. And so after completing the NW corner (actually kinda hard, as NW corners completely unaffected by theme material go), I went off searching for the theme and oof, I could kind of tell that this was going to be a super-gimmick puzzle because the grid didn't look like it contained a conventional theme-answer set-up. No symmetrical sets of longer answers that clearly screamed "hi, we're themers." The overall asymmetry should've tipped me to the fact that something structural was going on, but, well ... solving first thing in the morning, before 5am, before coffee ... it has its disadvantages. Anyway, I flailed around. I mean, really flailed. I proceeded in patchy fits and starts, in a roughly clockwise fashion, picking up some gimmes here and there (OMAR, GRETA), trying to make anything happen. But I never got real traction. No whoosh whooshing around the grid At All. I was also struggling to pick up non-theme stuff like LOWPH and COWS and WIRE. So it was a disaster. But somehow I was able to put ONESKI together (honestly, what the hell is that? There are skis and snowboards but wtf is ONESKI ... I almost put in UNISKI ...) (23D: A daredevil may hit the slopes with it). And from that "K," EBIKE (36A: Vehicle with a pedal assist mode). And from EBIKE, OBOE REED (33D: Certain woodwind requirement). And then ICE YOUR NOISES ANNÉE ... which gave me NUC at 45D: Alternative to wind or solar. By this point, I had considered that the black-square "L"s might be functioning as letters somehow, but I couldn't find an answer where that worked—nothing leading into or out of the "L"s that I could put together. But now: NUC- ... which had to be NUCLEAR ... I see the "L" but where's the ... [follows the "L" around the bend] ... oh. There it is. EAR. NUC + L + EAR. Finally.

After that, whoosh, this puzzle was over fast. I still had a lot of grid to fill in, but in retrospect it feels like it took no effort at all. I had to change POT SEL(L)ERS to POT DEA(L)ERS, but otherwise, once you figure out what's going on with the "L"s, you have a superpower that makes a formerly fearsome grid just roll over on its back so you can scratch its belly. It helped that I knew BOW WOW WOW ... but I will say that this puzzle's one not-so-great characteristic is its over-reliance on proper nouns. In a puzzle with a gimmick this tough, it seems cruel to throw so many no-universally-famous proper nouns at people. BOW WOW WOW was a gimme for me, but I was the perfect age to know about them. I can imagine many, many older and possibly younger solvers were without a clue. AVICII also seems generationally exclusionary. And Cousin GREG, don't get me started on the puzzle's assumption that all its solvers are familiar with so-called "prestige TV" (specifically HBO) down to the secondary and tertiary characters. To be clear, I don't have a problem with any of these answers per se, but throwing them *all* into an already tough-to-grab-hold-of grid feels ... well, not great. Also, giving two of your five theme answers "?" clues felt particularly cruel. But thematic cruelty is kind of Thursday's job, so I can't actually fault the puzzle there.

I'm burying the lede here a bit, but I think the theme is ingenious. I feel like we had a TAKE THE L puzzle very recently ... I know I put the Motels song up recently, and it must have been a theme that occasioned it. Hmm, looks like it was actually a "TAKE AN L" puzzle (back on Sep. 21, 2022). I complained then that "TAKE AN L" is not nearly as tight and common a phrase as "TAKE THE L" and this puzzle apparently heard me and six months later came to vindicate me. My missteps today were too many to count, since I was basically misstepping constantly until I figured out the theme. The "D" from MEDI- was particularly devastating (20A: Lead-in to care), since it made 5D: Easter egg-making supply really really really look like it was going to be something + DYE. I would never consider a hot towel before a meal a NICETY—that word suggests something fussy and unnecessary. It has a prissy vibe. I hear it mostly in relation to language or social behavior, not towels, and usually in the plural, referring to matters of etiquette. But it's the fussiness that is paramount, and there's nothing particularly fussy (I don't think) about the hot towel before a meal. The connotation of the word is negative, and I don't mind a restaurant providing me a hot towel before a meal, so there. And there are ANKARA cats and rabbits now, what? (16A: Turkish city that lends its name to a species of rabbit, cat and goat). I had ANGORA there for ... well, too long. I really gotta run now. My bus comes at 7:15am regardless of whether the Thursday puzzle was tough or not. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Neologism for best ever / THU 9-16-21 / Apt foreign rhyme for moon / Super Mario creature that resembles a turtle / Marvel character with metallic skin / the Saxon Ivanhoe's father in Ivanhoe / Nearly massless subatomic particle / Metonym for movie industry

Constructor: Kevin Patterson

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: SILVER / LINING (33A: With 44-Across, bit of consolation ... or a feature of this puzzle's grid?) — the "lining" of the puzzle (i.e. every edge answer) begins with "silver" (which you have to mentally supply):

The SILVER / LINING:

• BELLS (1A: Christmas classic covered by Bing Crosby and Bob Dylan, among others)
• BACK (6A: Kind of gorilla)
• AGE (10A: Second-best era)
• TONGUE (16AD: Gift of persuasiveness)
• SCREEN (51D: Metonym for the movie industry)
• SPOON (71A: Symbol of privilege)
• WARE (70A: Forks and knives, e.g.)
• FOX (69A: Attractive older fellow)
• SURFER (42D: Marvel character with metallic skin)
• BULLET (1D: Simple solution to a big problem)

Word of the Day: (Silver) SURFER (42D) —

The Silver Surfer is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character also appears in a number of movies, television, and video game adaptations. The character was created by Jack Kirby and first appeared in the comic book Fantastic Four #48, published in 1966.

The Silver Surfer is a humanoid alien with metallic skin who can travel through space with the aid of his surfboard-like craft. Originally a young astronomer named Norrin Radd on the planet Zenn-La, he saved his homeworld from the planet devourer, Galactus, by serving as his herald. Imbued in return with some portion of Galactus' Power Cosmic, Radd acquired vast power, a new body and a surfboard-like craft on which he could travel faster than light. Now known as the Silver Surfer, Radd roamed the cosmos searching for planets for Galactus to consume. When his travels took him to Earth, he met the Fantastic Four, who helped him rediscover his nobility of spirit. Betraying Galactus, the Surfer saved Earth but was exiled there as punishment. (wikipedia)

• • •

I can't stop laughing at RONI. Who calls it RONI? I feel like this alleged slang belongs in the same fictional pizza universe where people call it 'ZA. "Hey, I'm gonna order a 'ZA, whaddya want on it?" "RONI!" "OK, a RONI 'ZA, gotcha. I'll call KOOPA's" (which seems as good a name for an imaginary pizzeria as any). Stop inventing slang, esp. slang abbrs.! Or, keep doing it, so I can end every puzzle laughing. Let's see, what else was in this puzzle? Oh, right, SILVER / LINING! This is one of those ideas that seems like it shoulda been done a million jillion years ago. You see the phrase and the puzzle just writes itself. It's a fine idea, but wow does it make solving the puzzle easy. Once you get the gimmick, you've basically got every edge answer handed to you on a ... hey, where's PLATTER? Why isn't PLATTER in this puzzle? PLATTER needs a better agent? Oh, wait, I'm seeing that PLATTER is just too long. Poor PLATTER. A victim of lengthism yet again (probably). I got the theme right away. Well, I should've gotten it here:

But somehow I thought the intersection of the answers was what mattered, so I had no real idea what to expect. Also, I was still singing the "Christmas classic" in my head like this: "Jingle bells ... jingle bells .. it's Christmas tiiiiiiime in the city," so yeah, many facets of the puzzle hadn't quite sunk in yet. But then I got the silverBACK gorilla and:

At this point, I could've gone around and filled in every edge answer, but I resisted and continued to solve normally (i.e. working off crosses until I was done). So I actually forced myself to slow down, which is *not* something I'm accustomed to doing, but it meant the silver answers came in one at a time instead of in a glut, which I think was probably a nicer experience. There's nothing particularly stunning about the fill, but it's clean and it holds up. But then again I was in a good mood from the start, because, well, I have a longstanding, fervent, unwavering crush on Laura LINNEY, so it's always delightful to run into her, in the LONDON AREA or wherever. Speaking of LONDON AREA, that was probably the hardest thing in the puzzle for me to get, honestly, mostly because I was thinking maybe all those Premier League teams played in the same LONDON arena (hey, just add "n" to your AREA and bam, arena!). But no, just the area. 

Five things:

• 
  20A: Apt foreign rhyme of "moon" (LUNE) — this is actually a non-foreign rhyme. LUNE is a geometrical term. Also, apparently, a pasta-shape term: "a filled pasta case made from a circle of pasta dough folded over" (google)
• 26D: "Absolutely!" ("YUP!") — this is Absolutely! my least favorite clue (or one of them) because there are a bunch of viable and semi-viable three-letter "Y" answers and you have no idea which one it's gonna be. I went with "YES!" "YEP!" would've been reasonable. "YEA" and "YAH" seem far less likely but you never know.
• 18D: Like some healthier potato chips (NO-SALT) — ah, I see the Snack Food Council has got its thumb on the scale again. Did a NO-SALT potato chip write this clue? There is no "healthy" (or "healthier") potato chip, please keep the word "healthy" at least six feet away from the word "potato chip" at all times. If you are cramming chips in your mouth, you've left "healthiness" behind (and that's OK!). Eat chips! Or don't! But healthy shmealthy (or healthier shmealthier, I guess)
• 49A: Some significant others, for short (BFS) — short for boyfriends. Another answer (like "YUP!") where the answer (that first letter, in particular) could've easily been more than one thing. This answer looks like a typo for BFFS.
• 59D: Pixy ___ (candy brand) (STIX) — I always want this answer to be STYX, which is apt, as this is the only candy they have in hell. Dante uses it to punish the gluttons in Ring 3. Oh, you don't think so? Yeesh, read a book once in a while, why don't you!?

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. GOAT = Greatest Of All Time (15A: Neologism for "best ever"). Not the first time we've seen this. Won't be the last.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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One-named singer with 2019 hit Without Me / TUE 5-11-21 / Twitter thumbs-up informally / Vehicles in some tabloid photos / Dew Drop historic New Orleans nightclub / 2012 Grammy winner for Channel Orange

Constructor: Kevin Patterson

Relative difficulty: Medium (or harder, depending on how good your knowledge of contemporary pop music is)

THEME: LOW-KEY (66A: Casual ... or a hint to the answers to the five starred clues) — five long two-words Downs have a keyboard "key" as their second (or, spatially, "low") word:

Theme answers:

• FIRE ESCAPE (3D: *Steps taken in an emergency?)
• BIRTH CONTROL (21D: *The pill, e.g.)
• OPEN TAB (25D: *Running bill at a bar)
• STORAGE SPACE (10D: *What closets and attics provide)
• FIRST SHIFT (30D: *Nine to five, at a factory)

Word of the Day: HALSEY (47D: One-named singer with the 2019 #1 hit "Without Me") —

Ashley Nicolette Frangipane (/ˌfrændʒɪˈpɑːni/; born September 29, 1994), known professionally as Halsey (IPA: /ˈhɔːlzi/, /ˈhɑːlzi/), is an American singer and songwriter. Gaining attention from self-released music on social media platforms, she was signed by Astralwerks in 2014 and released her debut EP, Room 93, later that year.

Halsey's debut studio album Badlands (2015) reached no. 2 on the US Billboard 200. Her second album Hopeless Fountain Kingdom (2017) topped the chart, and her third album Manic (2020) peaked at number two. She has had two no. 1 singles on the Billboard Hot 100, "Closer", a collaboration with The Chainsmokers, and "Without Me". The single "Bad at Love" reached the top-five. 

Halsey has sold over one million albums. She is noted for her distinctive singing voice. Her awards and nominations include four Billboard Music Awards, one American Music Award, one GLAAD Media Award, an MTV Video Music Award, and two Grammy Award nominations. She was included on Time magazine's annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2020. (wikipedia)

• • •

My path to the revealer here was so weird and unexpected, and I think it really added to my overall solving pleasure today. I almost always start in the NW and then solve in a wave, working crosses from answers I already have (instead of jumping around the grid). This is especially true with early-week puzzles, which tend to be easy, which means I don't get stuck, which means I don't *have* to go jumping around the grid to regain traction. Usually this work-the-crosses habit keeps me pretty tightly contained in one section of the grid at a time, but today, because the themers are vertical, I went zooming to the bottom of the grid very early on, and what do you think I found there? That's right, the "key" to the whole thing. Just sitting there at the bottom of the grid. 

Not sure why I decided to check the "L" cross on BIRTH CONTROL instead of heading back to the NW, but I'm really glad I did. Stumbling into the revealer like this absolutely maximized my delight. First of all, I just like LOW-KEY, all on its own, having nothing to do with the theme. It is a common enough adjective, but it feels fresh because the term has had something of a colloquial surge lately, both as an adjective and (more novelly) as an adverb (e.g. "I LOW-KEY hate him!"). "LOW-KEY" is featured in this incredibly stupidly-titled article, "24 phrases millennials use all the time but no one else gets." So I regular-key liked it. But then to look over, see ESCAPE and CONTROL, and not only grasp the theme immediately, but notice that LOW-KEY was crossing one of the very "keys" it was talking about—that the CONTROL "key" was in fact the key to my seeing LOW-KEY in the first place—all of this meant that the revealer landed in a way that very few revealers land: with a genuine, multi-layered aha moment: "oh ... Oh! ... OK, wow, cool." Thankfully, the rest of the puzzle was strong enough that I never lost the very good vibe created by my early LOW-KEY discovery.

The only let-down for me was FIRST SHIFT, which obviously, screamingly, should've been NIGHT SHIFT. The ghost of NIGHT SHIFT haunts this puzzle. It is the much much better, more vivid, more familiar phrase, and it is very angry that it got killed off. But if you try to swap FIRST for NIGHT, you will discover very quickly *why* it got killed off. If you tear everything out, back to STORAGE SPACE (which is a themer and thus can't be torn out), and then try to refill the grid with NIGHT SHIFT in place ... you can't. Well, you'd have to keep tearing, past BLACK SEA and all the way to god knows where. Because PESCI would become P-H-- and only PSHAW fits that pattern. And aside from being bad fill, PSHAW leaves you with -S-K where PERK now stands, and you can see how limited you are there, and so on and so on. Basically, FIRST SHIFT is disappointing relative to NIGHT SHIFT, but not half as disappointing as the grid itself would be had you tried to force NIGHT SHIFT to work. So you just make your peace with FIRST SHIFT and hope that NIGHT SHIFT doesn't seek revenge somehow.

The one problem I can see here, from an ordinary older-solver perspective, is the proper-noun crossing of HART and HALSEY. It's HALSEY who's gonna flummox a lot of people today. The majority of older solvers (a huge segment of the solving population) will not have heard of her. I don't know what I mean by "older" exactly, but let's just say I'm Gen X and barely know her. Or, rather, I know her name well enough, but only as a name. No context. No specifics. She's a popular singer. That's all I got. I can guarantee you that the majority of solvers older than I are going to have far less of a clue. Which is not a big deal, she's clearly famous enough to be in the puzzle, it's just that you've got to watch all of the crosses on her name. Now Kevin HART is much more famous (I think?) than HALSEY, so he's probably a fair cross for HALSEY's not-guessable "H"—but of the HALSEY crosses, HART is definitely the diciest, especially with a pretty bare-bones clue (47A: Stand-up comic Kevin). Crossing proper names is just dangerous. And when you cross two pop-culture names at a largely unguessable letter, you're definitely ruining someone's day somewhere. 

Again, both HALSEY and HART are plenty famous, and "H" is probably the best guess there if you are totally in the dark. Still, even though I knew both performers, that cross set off an alarm. You have to be careful when crossing names, especially when those names come from the same general ecosystem (here, contemporary popular entertainment). You don't want to leave *any* solvers hanging on a Tuesday. I haven't even mentioned FRANK OCEAN, who, like HALSEY, will be new to a sizable section of older-than-millennial solvers. His crosses all look fine, but if you've never heard of him before, you have my sympathy, especially since, if you don't know him, you almost certainly don't know HALSEY, which leaves you struggling for names twice. And on a Tuesday. Oh well. There have been tons of puzzles aimed at older solvers. Most of them, one might argue. A little correction is probably overdue.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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1956 Mideast imbroglio / TUE 7-7-20 / 1980s-90s heavyweight champ Mike / Feeling unhappy or angry

Constructor: Kevin Patterson

Relative difficulty: Easy (2:48! Zing!)

THEME: WRAPPING PAPER (38A: Holiday purchase ... or a hint to the circled letters) — circled letters spell out different kinds of paper if you imagine the letters wrapping around from the east, off the grid, continuing again in the west:

Papers:

• STOCK SPLIT / MUST
• A TOI / LET GO
• OSCAR / BOND
• OTIS / SUEZ CRISIS

Word of the Day: MARIST College (48D: ___ College (school in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.)) —

Marist College is a private liberal arts college in Poughkeepsie, New York. Founded in 1905, Marist was formed by the Marist Brothers, a Catholic religious institute of Brothers, to prepare brothers for their vocations as educators. In 1929, Marist became accredited by the state to offer a wider range of degrees in the arts and sciences. Today, Marist offers a comprehensive liberal arts education, offering 56 undergraduate and graduate degree programs and 21 certificate programs. (wikipedia)

• • •

Hard to be too mad at a Tuesday puzzle that you destroy the way I destroyed this one. I can't remember the last time I was in the 2:40s on a *Tuesday*. Sometimes, on Monday, if I'm pretty fast, but Tuesday? For me, that is very rare. Again, as with my record-setting Monday last week, I was able to run the top three Acrosses 1-2-3, and then drill virtually all the crossing Downs from there, including long stuff like RICHARD GERE (8D: "Pretty Woman" co-star) and HALFTIME (11D: Occasion for a locker room pep talk)—it really does make a profound difference not just how many letters you have in a word before you look at the clue, but *which* letters you have. First is best. Odds are always that it's going to be the most valuable letter in any answer, in terms of its ability to help you guess the answer. Yes, sometimes you luck into a Q or a J in in some non-initial position and that will help you get an answer quickly, but in terms of which *position* is likely to help you: first first first. So run the top Acrosses and then work the Downs. That is how to do the easy puzzles, I've determined (if some actual speed-solving pro tells you different, though, you should listen to them, as the real speedsters will have me beat by a full minute today). Another thing about finishing swiftly—it makes you feel as if the grid was clean *and* generally warmly disposes you to the puzzle as a whole. So, yeah, I don't hate this one. The theme seems fine. I didn't get an aha from it; more of an "oh, sure, yeah, I see." It's entirely adequate, and because the theme is not (at all) demanding in terms of the pressure it puts on the grid, we are able to enjoy a reasonably smooth overall experience. I mean, yeah, lots of uninspired short stuff, but nothing inordinately bad, and the worst (À TOI) had thematic purpose. Oh, sorry, UIE is the worst, but that is in theme territory too. . . so I'm not too mad. That SW corner is (inexplicably) the very weakest, but still, overall, this holds up just fine for a Tuesday.


ONE PUR ROO IMP to rule them all! ... seems like a good tagline for a very bizarre fantasy movie. Ooh, I don't like ANOWL much at all, so maybe the fill is wobblier here than I first suspected. The things you miss when you're flying! Someone on Twitter suggested just now that the "PLEASE" clue (20A: Word repeated before "Me" in a Beatles hit) was problematic because it specifically refers to "Me" when "Me" is clearly in the grid at "BEER ME!" (42A: Slangy frat house request). I guess, technically that's a dupe, but two-letter words ... don't really rate as violations (for the most part) in my book. I thought REI sold camping gear, whereas LL Bean ... that's mostly just casual clothes for lightly outdoorsy types, right? Oh, I see they also sell camping gear, technically ... still, something seems slightly off about the comparison. I've never seen an REI catalogue, is my main point. It's fine. I don't particularly like REI as fill, though, regardless of the clue. But Tuesdays can be and certainly have been much worse than this. I will take this.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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