Casual gaming site? / THU 8-13-26 / "Gold" of the 21st century / Query for Claude, e.g. / Verbalized shivers / A.I. that has been trained with massive amounts of text, in brief / Cough drop brand whose name is yodeled in its commercials / Epitome of a hot place / Kind of bean used in Egyptian falafel

Constructor: Killian Olson

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

[35A: "Light" weapon]

THEME: SIZING UP (66A: Evaluating, as an opponent ... or a hint to "fitting"the answers to the italicized clues into the grid) —you must move certain letters "up a size" in order to fit them in the grid, e,g. change an S (small) to an M (medium), or a L (large) is to an XL (extra large); this results in new words that don't seem to match the clues:

Theme answers:

• LOBSTERS (from "Mobsters") (17A: Mafia members, e.g.) (M to L) 
• ESPOUSES (from "Ex-spouses") (26A: Alimony recipients, say) (XS to S)
• AXLES (from "Ales") (41A: Drinks at a pub) (L to XL)
• AQUARIUM (from "Aquarius") (53A: 11th of a noted 12) (S to M)

Word of the Day: LLM (34D: A.I. that has been trained with massive amounts of text, in brief) —

A large language model (LLM) is an AI model (typically a neural network) trained on a vast amount of text for natural language processing tasks, especially language generation. LLMs can typically generate, summarize, translate, and analyze text in many contexts, and are a foundational technology behind modern chatbots. Biased or inaccurate training data can make an LLM's output less reliable.

LLMs are typically based on transformer architecture. Generative pre-trained transformers (GPTs) are a type of LLM that is pre-trained to predict the next word. GPTs are then often fine-tuned to follow instructions and to behave as assistants.

Benchmark evaluations for LLMs attempt to measure model reasoning, factual accuracy, alignment, and safety. (wikipedia)

• • •

This one EKEs out three stars because the theme is genuinely interesting and clever, although ... I assume someone's just going to put this thing in reverse and do a DOWNSIZING puzzle now (that's a snappier revealer, I think—can't believe it hasn't been done, at least not in the NYT). Outside the theme, the puzzle is obnoxiously tech-obsessed, with a fondness for A.I. that made it completely repulsive to me. I want to see Claude and LLM in my puzzle about as much as I want to see anything related to Harry ****ing Potter. Maybe less so. It's a scourge on so many levels that I get exhausted just thinking about explaining why. "But it's the world we live in, get used to it." No. You get used it, you be the accommodationists. It's crap (the forward facing LLMs, for sure). Also, many of the clues today are truly awkward, as opposed to cleverly misdirective, which made the solving experience frequently unpleasant. [Casual gaming site?] for SOFA? What, is there a formal gaming site? Monaco? What are you, James Bond? I've never seen anyone "gaming" who wasn't beyond casual. Completely casual. Where are these tuxedo'd gamers you posit? How is your SOFA any more "casual" than, say, an arcade? Then there's the wording in 9D: Apple accessory announced alongside the removal of the iPhone's headphone jack (AIRPODS). I just keep looking at "announced alongside the removal" and my head hurts every time. "Announced alongside" ... is the removal also being announced? Yes? No? "Announced alongside" seems to imply that you're removing the headphone jack as you're announcing the AIRPODS. Maybe "in response to the removal" or "following the removal," but "alongside" implies a strange simultaneity of words (announcement) and action (removal) that's hard to visualize and just sounds ugly as written. Also, "boil" and "steam" or two different things. Also, snow is normal-wintry, not "especially wintry" (57A: Was especially wintry = SNOWED). Again, I liked the theme concept. I just didn't like much else. Structurally, the puzzle seems reasonably well made, but content and cluing were on the displeasing side, for sure.

Back to the theme—it was tricky for many reasons. The answers are "wrong" for their clues, so you have to figure out why, great, this happens not infrequently on Thursdays. But today, even after I saw the "gimmick" (LOBSTERS is obv. a one-letter change of MOBSTERS), I did not see it at all. This is because that letter change in LOBSTERS/MOBSTERS involves consecutive letters, so I figured we were just dropping the letter down one place in the alphabet. That is, I didn't see Medium changed to Large, I saw the letter "M" dropped back one space in the alphabet to the letter "L." Things didn't exactly get clearer with the other themers. I got AXLES and wondered why we were now adding a letter instead of changing a letter. The puzzle now seemed to have two different conceits. What the hell? And ESPOUSES also looked like an add-a-letter situation, since I thought the base answer was just "spouses" (26A: Alimony recipients, say). Even after I got SIZING UP and figured out why most of the changes were happening, I was stuck on ESPOUSES. I still thought we were changing "spouses," so "S" appeared to have been changed to "ES," and I was like "ES!?!?! That is not how you write "extra small" ... also ... wait, Small to Extra Small would be sizing down, not sizing up ..." Finally dawned on me that the base answer was EX-SPOUSES, not just "spouses." Let's just say XS is not a size I think about often, and definitely not in the standard size range (SML + XL). So even though the themers were easy enough to get, completely grasping the theme took some time.

Bullets:

• 8A: One who's definitely not being invited to the party (PARIAH) — another example of cluing being "????" Like, I wanted there to be wordplay, like maybe "party" was being used in a political way, something like that. But instead it's just ... literal. Yeah, I guess you would not invite a social outcast to your party. "Hey, you know who we're definitely not inviting to this party? Hitler." The answer seems too extreme or contextually wrong for the clue. Looked at another way, there's something sort of snotty and snobby and mean-girls (or boys) exclusionary about the way this clue is phrased. Clue could be shorter and clearer and better.
• 25D: "Gold" of the 21st century (DATA) — ugh, shut up. The big tech boosterism here is barfsome.
• 49A: Collect over and over, as resources in a video game (FARM) — we get it, you're on the computer a lot, yeesh. Give it a rest.

• 55D: Allow to post on a forum again, e.g. (UNBAN) — they finally UNBANned me from QUORA after I agreed to stop answering user questions with Yeti conspiracy theories (54D: Website that describes itself as "a place to share knowledge and better understand the world").
• 8D: Query for Claude, e.g. (PROMPT) — in the future, there will be no writers. Just PROMPTers. (In case you've been living under a rock, the "Claude" here is one of the better known LLMs (or "series of LLMs," per wikipedia).
• 44A: ___ Ingebrigtsen, track gold medalist at the 2020 and 2024 Olympics (JAKOB) — come on, if you're gonna throw some obscure Olympian name at me, at least tell me what he got his medals for. "Track" doesn't cut it (he won the 1500 meters in 2020 and the 5000 meters in 2024)
• 39A: Verbalized shivers (BRRS) — has never and will never be a thing. The stupidest plural I've ever seen in my life. And it turns out this is, in fact, the first time I'm seeing it in my life: its last appearance in the NYTXW was 1967. They were much more desperate for fill back then. Something about the Cold War ... rationing ... I forget, but clearly times were bad.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Storage room in a church / TUE 3-24-26 / Race that no one can win cleanly / Hidden area of the internet / "The Luncheon" painter / "The Buffet" painter / ___ Cruz, at 6'7" the tallest shortstop in M.L.B. history / It may be found at the end of the line

Constructor: Killian Olson

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (***for a Tuesday***)

THEME: STARVING ARTISTS (60A: What you might punnily call 17-, 27- and 48-Across, given the paintings in their clues?) — artists clued via paintings that deal with eating:

Theme answers:

• LEONARDO DA VINCI (17A: "The Last Supper" painter)
• CLAUDE MONET (27A: "The Luncheon" painter)
• PAUL CÉZANNE (48A: "The Buffet" painter)

Word of the Day: ONEIL Cruz (30D: ___ Cruz, at 6'7" the tallest shortstop in M.L.B. history) —

Oneil Cruz (born October 4, 1998) is a Dominican professional baseball center fielder and shortstop for the Pittsburgh Pirates of Major League Baseball (MLB). He made his MLB debut in 2021 and led the National League (NL) in stolen bases in 2025.

• • •

Today's write-up has to be pretty short because my wife gets in from NZ (via NYC) at 2:20am and so I'm kind of in a sleep no-man's-land. Not gonna get enough sleep no matter how I slice it. I'm writing this just after 10:00pm (when the puzzle comes out), but I do want to try to sneak in a little sleep before 2:00am, if I can, so ... yeah, like I say, gonna be quick about it. I don't exactly get why a (literally?) starving artist would paint a dining experience, but OK, if you're "starving" you're hungry, and so maybe you've got food on your mind? I guess it makes sense. What's weird, though, is that in order to make the theme work, the clues have to resort to two paintings that are not (at least not by name, not to me) iconic. The first one, sure, LEONARDO DA VINCI, obvious, no problem. But The Luncheon??? If I've seen it, I definitely didn't catch its name. Not a painting I can imagine right now, sitting here, without looking it up. Ditto Cézanne's The Buffet. You say The Last Supper, and bam, I can see that painting in my mind's eye, immediately. The others ... nope. Which means that those clues were absolutely no help in getting the painters. May as well just have said [A famous painter]. The idea here is cute enough, but it feels maybe more Wednesday than Tuesday. This definitely played slower than most Tuesdays. 

[The Last Supper]

[The Luncheon]

[The Buffet]

And it wasn't just the themers that slowed me down (slightly). I got held up by ordinary clues, repeatedly, starting in the NW, where FILL as [Permeate] just did not click for me at all. Permeate implies something more ... liquid? ... so I had SEEP there. And the FISH clue was definitely late-week stuff (1A: It may be found at the end of the line) (why is a FISH calling me???)*. So I was slow out of the gate, and then very slow in the dead center, where two things I've never heard of (MUD RUN? ONEIL Cruz?) stood side-by-side. ONEIL (no apostrophe) was particularly "O"nerous because that answer was the only way I was going to be able to differentiate MANET from MONET ("The Luncheon"? Honestly sounds more MANET than MONET to me...) (in fact ... hey, didn't MANET paint Déjuener sur l'herbe ("Luncheon on the Grass")??? He did! No wonder "Luncheon" gave me MANET vibes.

[Déjeuner sur l'herbe, Edouard Manet, 1863]

If you wanted a baseball ONEIL, I mean, Buck O'NEIL is right there.** Negro Leagues superstar. First African-American coach in M.L.B. history. Hall of Famer. Whereas all ONEIL Cruz has done so far is lead the league in stolen bases once (which I know only because I looked it up). So, yeah, the middle was a mess for me. Beyond MUD RUN (29D: Race that no one can win cleanly) and ONEIL, there was also the somewhat vaguely clued MYRIAD, which crossed YAY, which I thought might be RAH (44D: "Hurray!"). I also totally forgot CÉZANNE's first name. That's a me problem, for sure, but it compounded the slowness in an already slow section. 

The fill was MEH. The long Downs are OK. DARK WEB is kinda nice as an answer (I have no idea what it's like as a place—seems bad) (5D: Hidden area of the internet). Maybe a few too many olden repeaters today (MRE, ATTA (as clued), AGAR, ESPY, DES, URAL). Don't have much more to say about this one. Well, a little more...

Bullets:

• 51A: "There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one's ___": Poor Richard's Almanack ("SELF") — ugh, fill-in-the-blank quote clues. I cannot understand giving this much cluing real estate over to a quote this banal. 

• 28D: "Love," euphemistically ("L" WORD) — pfft, this did not compute. I had -W-RD and was like "... is love a SWORD? Is it an AWARD?" To me, The "L" WORD is "lesbian." 

• 56D: Grammy alternative (NANA) — yet another example of late-week cluing. Not the musical Grammy, but the "nickname for grandma" grammy. I wanted to say "no one calls their grandma that" but it is in fact exactly what my daughter has always called my stepmother, so ... touché, puzzle!

OK, off to sleep now. For 3-ish hours. Assuming I fall asleep quickly (ha). 

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*please, no letters, I'm joking  

**there's also Paul O'NEILL, but as you can see, he spells his last name with two "L"s

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Feminine side, in Jungian psychology / TUES 11-26-24 / Part of a ski that cuts into the snow / "Terrible" stage of toddlerhood / Mover's tote

Hello, everyone! It’s Clare, back for the last Tuesday in November. We got our first real taste of winter here in D.C. last week when it briefly snowed; it was so chilly one day that I even decided to Metro instead of bike (which takes a lot). I’ve been enjoying my sports — yay, Liverpool at the top of the table by eight points; maybe yay on my Steelers, whose quality varies week to week; almost yay to the Washington Spirit, who made it to the NWSL championship but lost to the Orlando Pride last weekend; and big yay to the Warriors, who’ve had a great start to the season!

Anywho, on to the puzzle…

Constructor: Killian Olson

Relative difficulty: Pretty easy for a Tuesday

THEME: AUTO FILLED — (58A: Completed without manual input, as an online form … or a description of this puzzle's shaded squares) — The shaded squares of each theme answer spell out a car (or “auto”) brand

Theme answers:

• OUT OF ORDER (16A: Not currently functioning) 
• CONCRETE SLAB (22A: Section of a sidewalk) 
• MARATHON DANCERS (35A: Participants in an endurance competition set to music) 
• EGG MCMUFFINS (46A: Sandwiches that kick-started the fast-food breakfast industry)

Word of the Day: EGG MCMUFFINS (46A: Sandwiches that kick-started the fast-food breakfast industry) —

McMuffin is a family of breakfast sandwiches sold by the international fast food restaurant chain McDonald's. The Egg McMuffin is the signature sandwich, which was invented in 1972 by Herb Peterson to resemble eggs benedict, a traditional American breakfast dish with English muffins, ham, eggs and hollandaise sauce… One reason the sandwich was [at-first] served open-faced was that a small tub of strawberry preserves was provided, along with a knife. The sweet and savory approach did not catch on (at least in the US), although a packet of strawberry preserves will still be provided upon request. The first McDonald's corporate-authorized Egg McMuffin was served at the Belleville, New Jersey, McDonald's in 1972. (Wiki)

• • •

Congrats to the constructor on a fun debut puzzle! This one had a clever theme and some nice long answers and left me little to complain about. All in all a good Tuesday. 

The AUTO FILLED (58A) theme is inventive, and topical, too, given how pervasive AUTO FILL is these days. I’m not usually a big shaded squares person, but it didn’t bother me much in this puzzle, and the car brands were all legit. The theme answers were a nice collection. I loved seeing EGG MCMUFFINS (46A) in the puzzle. I used to have so many sausage EGG MCMUFFINS when I was younger and traveling with my parents for one of my sporting events. MARATHON DANCERS (35A) seems slightly backward to me (like it could be “dance marathoners”), but it’s still a fun concept — apparently some of the original dance marathons went on for 1,000-plus hours, which is wild. CONCRETE SLAB (22A) was the most boring of the theme answers for me. OUT OF ORDER (16A) was also straightforward but has a nice ring to it. 

Along with the theme answers, I loved the long downs. We’ve got FOOD COMA (4D: After-meal drowsiness known scientifically as postprandial somnolence), which is apparently an actually scientific thing and something we may all experience come Thanksgiving when we’re eating a lot of food. The clue for TUMBLEWEED (10D: Western roller) was just about perfect, and it’s a word I can’t say I’ve ever seen in a crossword puzzle before, which excited me. RARING TO GO (26D: Bursting with anticipation) is a fun expression, and CHISELED (28D: Like a bodybuilder's physique) is a vivid word. I keep hoping someone other than my family will tell me how CHISELED my back muscles look after all my rock climbing, but *sigh* I guess I'll just keep waiting. 

My biggest hang-up with the puzzle was with a few of the clues. I got stuck with 44D: Good for skating, but bad for driving because I put “ice” instead of ICY. The clue seems to be calling for a noun but then instead gives you an adjective; ICY conditions are bad for driving and good for skating, but ICY isn’t bad for driving and good for skating. I don’t think 25A: High school events with elaborate proposals really works for PROMS because the events themselves don’t have elaborate proposals; it’s in the lead-up to the prom when you get “promposals” (but that might be nitpicking). For OMIT, I didn’t love the clue 23D: Replace with an ellipsis, maybe; the wording just seemed strange. As far as I’m aware, people don’t refer to a developer as a “dev,” so the clue for APP (6A: Dev's development) seemed like a long way to go to avoid a standard clue for some crosswordese. And if you’ll let me nitpick one final time, I don’t think 1A: They're artificial at half of all NFL stadiums really works for TURFS. You might say half the stadiums have artificial turf (singular), but it seems very strange to me to say that half the TURFS are artificial or that stadiums have artificial TURFS. Just another wording thing. 

On the other hand, I absolutely loved 52A: ___-referential (like the clue for 52-Across) as SELF. Seriously, that one clue/answer made my day and put me in a great mood for the rest of the solve. That’s just so clever (or I’m easily impressed). To a lesser degree, I thought 9A: Feature of a movie, or a movie review as STAR was also great. 

Although it didn’t feel like there were that many proper nouns in the puzzle, as I tried picking them out and typing them up, I see there were a pretty normal amount — LUNA; WEBMD, EGG MCMUFFINS, ANDOR, PEELE, KROC, EDYS, AMSTEL, GUIDO, ALDO, and Formula ONE. Maybe my feeling was because they seemed so familiar or easy, and I had a hard time trying to decide what could be a word of the day. I only struggled with AMSTEL (43D: Beer brand named for a Dutch river) (not a big beer drinker), though I imagine some people may not have seen or heard of ANDOR (6D: Disney+ series that's a prequel to "Rogue One"), given that it’s more recent. 

I liked having both KROC (14D) and EGG MCMUFFINS (46A) in the puzzle to connect McDonald’s. I’ve been guilty of checking my symptoms on WEBMD (21A: Site with a Symptom Checker feature) and deciding that I definitely have a brain tumor (spoiler: I don’t). I love Key & PEELE (7D: Key's partner in sketch comedy) sketches, even if it’s been way too many years. And I’ll truly never get used to seeing the ice cream brand EDYS (56D: Brand whose logo has an apostrophe shaped like an ice cream cone) in stores, rather than the West Coast version — Dreyer’s — which also has an ice cream cone in its logo. 

The puzzle wasn’t too bogged down by crosswordese. The only bits that really annoyed me were UH UH (2D: "Not a chance!"), AS AM I (28A: "Me too!," more formally), and I’M IN (18A: "Sounds like a plan!"). Those clues could have led to so many different, uninteresting answers, which I never like. I much prefer the form “slyest” rather than SLIEST (9D: Most cunning), which looks and feels very wrong. I also will never love the form of R AND B (12: Genre for D'Angelo or Daniel Caesar) in a crossword; my brain always wants to make it something like “Rand B” instead of reading it like it’s intended, as R&B. 

But overall the puzzle was cute and straightforward with pretty clean fill and was just what I needed. Not to be too SELF-referential.

Misc.:

• 60A: Part of a ski that cuts into the snow as EDGE obviously made me think of Mikaela Shiffrin, who just got her 99th World Cup win last weekend and will get to go for 100 at her home mountain in Killington, Vermont, this weekend. Go, Miki!! 
• GUIDO (47D: "Cars" character with an Italian accent) is seemingly used innocuously in this puzzle and references a car (or “auto,” which is on theme) from “Cars” that’s a small blue car that just dreams of being able to run pit stops in a race some day. But the word also apparently can be used as a slur against Italian-American men. So I would’ve left this one out of the puzzle. 
• 19A: Require one's owner to vacuum, perhaps as SHED reminds me… I’m very likely getting a puppy in just a few weeks! I’ll definitely be preparing myself for chewed up shoes and vacuuming and being tired from chasing the pup around. 
• I’ll never pass over a chance to share this Key & PEELE (7D) skit, where Keegan-Michael Key is a substitute teacher doing roll call; or this bit from the White House Correspondents Dinner, where Key does a bit he developed on the show and acts as President Obama’s “anger translator.”

And that’s all from me! Hope everyone has a happy Thanksgiving, and I’ll see you in December. 

Signed, Clare Carroll, who's hoping for an EGG-cellent December for my sports teams

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