Hopelessly internet-brained / TUE 3-17-26 / Indigo dye / "It's super-appreciated!," in a modern initialism / Home to Shibuya Crossing, the world's busiest pedestrian intersection / Title girl in a Beach Boys hit / Sci-fi character who says "Your father, he is" / Deli order that may lead to pungent breath / Midwest capital named for a president

Constructor: Kiran Pandey

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

[22A: Sci-fi character who says "Your father, he is"]

THEME: TERMINALLY ONLINE (62A: Hopelessly internet-brained ... or a description of the ends of 17-, 26-, 37- and 47-Across?) — answers end with things associated with a web browser (making the answers themselves TERMINALLY ONLINE, so to speak)

Theme answers:

• GIRL SCOUT COOKIES (17A: Thin Mints and Tagalongs)
• SAUSAGE LINK (26A: One in a breakfast chain?)
• LSD TAB (37A: Dose dropped for a trip)
• HIGH PROFILE (47A: Likely to attract attention, as in a criminal case)

Word of the Day: cookies (see 17A) —

An HTTP cookie (also called web cookie, Internet cookie, browser cookie, or simply cookie) is a small block of data created by a web server while a user is browsing a website and placed on the user's computer or other device by the user's web browser. Cookies are placed on the device used to access a website, and more than one cookie may be placed on a user's device during a session.

Cookies serve useful and sometimes essential functions on the web. They enable web servers to store stateful information (such as items added in the shopping cart in an online store) on the user's device or to track the user's browsing activity (including clicking particular buttons, logging in, or recording which pages were visited in the past). They can also be used to save information that the user previously entered into form fields, such as names, addresses, passwords, and payment card numbers for subsequent use.

• • •

Well I love the phrase TERMINALLY ONLINE, but I don't know about this themer set. It feels like a very sparse / loose / arbitrary grouping: cookies, link, tab, profile. I guess they are all generally in the "being online" universe, but that's a pretty big universe, and these four things don't feel like a complete or meaningful set. Not as complete or meaningful as I might like my themer set to be. I can't see "cookies" and so even though I know I have (sometimes) "accepted" them, I don't meaningfully, purposefully interact with them, the way I very clearly do with, say, a "link." And "link" is a part of an internet site, while "tab" and "profile" are parts of the browsers themselves. Actually, "profile" is really ambiguous, because I've got a "Profiles" option on my browser menu (I appear to be operating currently under my "Rex Parker" profile, on my Chrome browser), but then a "user profile" might be part of all kinds of websites, particularly social media sites, so I don't really know what "profile" is supposed to evoke for me here. The overall "online" grouping here seems weak. The revealer is great, and I can see how you'd want to take that phrase and do a theme in precisely this vein, but the execution here was just a little disappointing. Got an "oh, I guess, yeah," rather than a "wow, nice!" from me.

And before I got to the (admittedly great) revealer, I was slogging through some rough stuff, starting with ANIL, which made me stop short (14A: Indigo dye). "Really, we're doing ANIL? On an easy Tuesday puzzle in the year of our lord 2026? Back to 1999 with you, ANIL!" Certain words scream "crosswordese!" and boy that is one of them. Not hard (if you have been solving for decades), but unappealing. IDED and HST and CUDI and a handful of other repeaters made the top of this puzzle unpleasant to hack through. The most off-putting thing in the grid, for me, was TYVM (short for "thank you very much") (32A: "It's super-appreciated!," in a modern initialism). I think I'm not TERMINALLY ONLINE enough to appreciate it. I think it's more often used sarcastically, as when you are ironically defending yourself, the way you might use the full phrase ("thankyouverymuch"). Here is a random example that Wordnik scraped from some dank corner of the internet:

In my day (yes, I'm old and I know it, tyvm) our public school back in Ohio had FRUIT machines where we could buy apples, oranges or banana's.

and another:

Our blog isn't "DEAD", 'tis just on a prolonged hiatus tyvm :/

But it also just means regular old "thank you very much." I type thx, but have never been able to bring myself to use "ty" ("... who's Ty?"), and have definitely made the leap to "tyvm." Anyway, this initialism is a real enough thing, I just hate it. The rest of the non-theme fill in this grid is mostly blah. Inoffensive. OK. ALL THUMBS got a metaphorical "thumbs-up" from me as I plunked it down in the grid, and MOVIE CLIP and AVANT-GARDE are both rock solid. Kind of weird to have extra, non-thematic internet stuff going on in the grid (stuff like BLOG POST (40D: Bit of internet writing), or SENT (as clued) (61D: Label that's typically between "Inbox" and "Drafts")). Always seems more elegant when theme-related material stays contained entirely within the theme answers. Overall, this is a neat idea, semi-clunkily executed.

Bullets:

• 10D: Home to Shibuya Crossing, the world's busiest pedestrian intersection (TOKYO) — this probably should've been my "Word of the Day." You may never have heard of Shibuya Crossing, but I'm fairly sure that if you've seen any shots of TOKYO on movies or television, you've seen it. It's as iconic as Times Square.

Shibuya Scramble Crossing (渋谷スクランブル交差点, Shibuya sukuranburu kōsaten), commonly known as Shibuya Crossing, is a scramble crossing in Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan. It is located near Shibuya Station in Shibuya, a major commercial and entertainment district in Tokyo. It has been described as the world's busiest pedestrian crossing, with as many as 3,000 people crossing during a single green light cycle. Inaugurated in 1973, the intersection is a popular tourist destination and a widely recognized symbol of the city of Tokyo through its frequent appearances in television, film, and other media. (wikipedia)

• 5D: Old-fashioned, for one (COCKTAIL) — in my NYTXW spreadsheet, I track not only Star Wars references ("Hello darkness YODA my old friend..."), but COCKTAIL-related answers as well. I like the latter a lot better. I love a good Old-fashioned, though we don't really make them at home (we're more Manhattan and Manhattan-variant people, although my favorite COCKTAIL is the 100-Year-Old Cigar). Not sure this is the recipe my wife uses, but it'll do—from Difford's:

[I don't even like cigars, but this drink ... !]

• 12D: Like patrons at the door of a "21+ only" nightclub, informally (IDED) — was looking for some kind of "informal" word for "adult" and was prepared to be very annoyed by some horrible new slang like "ADDO" or something. "Thankfully" the answer was just IDED (I say "Thankfully" quote-unquote because IDED is terrible ... but at least it's understandable)

That's all. See you next time. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. All my love to my beautiful wife, Penelope, who is leaving (on a jet plane) tonight to attend her aunt's memorial in NZ. The cats and I will miss her. (The flight was supposed to leave yesterday but weather conditions in NYC made that impossible.) Oh, and thank you all very much (hey, TYVM!!!) for yesterday's condolences.  

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Race of mythical beings, in fantasy fiction / MON 5-19-25 / Alternative to Ax or Brut / Woodwind in a jazz band / Pilkey, author/illustrator who created Captain Underpants / Discontinued Apple program for organizing images / Cohort that grew up with the internet

Constructor: Kiran Pandey

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (solved Downs-only)

THEME: "OH GEEZ!" (69A: "Yikes!" ... or, phonetically, a hint to 17-, 28-, 46- and 61-Across) — two-word phrases where the first word starts with "O" and the second with "G" (so all the themers are "OGs":

Theme answers:

• OLIVE GARDEN (17A: Casual dining chain with unlimited breadsticks)
• OLYMPIC GAMES (28A: Event whose symbol is five interlocking rings)
• OPERA GLASSES (46A: Theater binoculars)
• ORANGE GROVE (61A: Starting point for Tropicana or Florida's Natural juice)

Word of the Day: D'Angelo (38A: Musical genre for D'Angelo and Erykah Badu => NEO-SOUL) —

Michael Eugene Archer (born February 11, 1974), better known by his stage name D'Angelo (/diˈændʒəloʊ/), is an American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and record producer. He first garnered attention after co-producing the single "U Will Know" for R&B supergroup Black Men United. His debut studio album, Brown Sugar (1995), was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and received widespread acclaim from music critics, who have credited the album for ushering in the neo soul movement. His third single, "Lady", reached the top ten on the Billboard Hot 100.

D'Angelo would then collaborate with artists such as Erykah Badu, Lauryn Hill, and then-girlfriend Angie Stone. His next album, Voodoo (2000), debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 and continued to receive critical acclaim. The album's lead single "Untitled (How Does It Feel)", earned him the Grammy Award for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance; likewise, Voodoo won Best R&B Album. Following this period, D'Angelo became increasingly uncomfortable with his growing status as a sex symbol. This was followed by numerous personal struggles, including alcoholism, which resulted in limited musical output for several years.

After over a decade spent mostly out of the public eye, he then released his third studio album, Black Messiah, in 2014. The album was met with critical acclaim and peaked at number five on the US Billboard 200. The same year, D'Angelo was hailed as the next Marvin Gaye by GQ. D'Angelo also contributed to the soundtrack for the 2018 video game Red Dead Redemption 2, performing the song "Unshaken". (wikipedia)

• • •

This puzzle provides a good example of the value of Downs-only solving. Solved normally, I think I might've found this a little simplistic. The revealer's fine, clever even, but the theme answers themselves are no great shakes, and there are at least a small handful of weak short answers that would've irked me more, I think, if I'd encountered them at speed. DAV and FAE are just bad, IMO. They have no place in any grid that isn't taxed considerably by the theme (or by beautiful longer fill, in a themeless). On a Monday, with a relatively straightforward theme, no, they should not be here. All the petty little things about the puzzle would've stood out more, or I'd've noticed them more, because there wasn't enough stuff to occupy my attention otherwise. But solving Downs-only ... now I'm on an adventure. Yes, FAE and DAV still grate, but I've got bigger fish to fry, as I try to wrangle the longer Down answers (which end up being some of the best fill the grid has to offer). I enjoyed the struggle to get CUSTOM FIT (which is a good answer). I enjoyed trying to remember deodorants and not being able to use Across clues to help me out—gave me longer to scroll through products, commercials, etc. as I eventually inferred a handful of Acrosses and then had OLD SPICE jump out at me (I was thinking of those weird half-man / half-horse commercials, so when I figured out the answer, I had a genuine "yes! that's what I was thinking of!" moment. I enjoyed being baffled by what "woodwind" in a jazz orchestra could possible have seven letters and an "L" in its second position. I could think of only three plausible woodwinds in a jazz orchestra, and none of them fit the profile. I forgot to reckon with the different saxophone *types*. ALTO! That's what that pesky "L" was doing there. These are the miniature battles, fought and won, that make Downs-only solving much more interesting than regular solving on a Monday. This puzzle seems like a decent, average Monday, but I had an above-average experience because the way it played Downs-only was genuinely entertaining (and because, unlike a regularly-solved Monday, it actually required a bit of effort on my part).

[Some good ALTO SAX in here (25D: Woodwind in a jazz band)]

Another feature of Downs-only solving is that innocuous-seeming words can turn suddenly perilous. Is it EACH ... or APOP!?  (31D: Per person). When you can't just look at the Across clues, the dilemma ... dilemmas even harder. See also PEEP v. WORD (34D: "Not another ___ out of you!"). Or what I thought was a BUTT v. REAR situation that turned out to be a third option: TUSH! (41D: Patootie). Then there was the puzzlingly non-"S" plural FEET (9D: Poetical units). I teach poetry—whole lessons on FEET!—and I still had to think a bit to come up with that one. CUSTOM FIT was probably the toughest hurdle of the day, as I ultimately had to accede, however reluctantly, to the near-certainty that FAE was going to be an actual answer in this puzzle. Had the CUSTOM part and wanted FIT but rejected it because, well, FAE, come on ... but then had to accept it once the "-IT" part became undeniable. So many little obstacles to overcome, but in the end, they were all overcomeable. Felt good. The puzzle ended on a slightly sour note, as I think I say "AW GEEZ," not "OH GEEZ," but the latter seems perfectly reasonable, so it didn't undermine my overall good vibes too much.

Assorted observations:

• 4D: ___ Pilkey, author/illustrator who created Captain Underpants (DAV) — I know that series is tremendously, generationally popular but for whatever reason this guy's name just didn't break through. My wife after solving this puzzle: "Am I supposed to know who wrote Captain Underpants?" Me: "I know, right?" We both just took an educated guess at his name, based on the crosses. The "D" in his name (crossing SPA DAY) was the last of his name letters for both of us.
• 33A: Discontinued Apple program for organizing images (iPHOTO) — the fewer the discontinued commercial products, the better. The less shilling for Apple, the better. The only reason I have any kind of affection for iPHOTO today is that it helped me pull off the PEEP / WORD differentiation at 34D: "Not another ___ out of you!" ("PEEP").
• 37A: Race of mythical beings, in fantasy fiction (FAE) — the last time this term appeared was three years ago, when Erik Agard clued it as [Neopronoun with a nod to folklore] (in a Friday puzzle). Before that, the last time it appeared was ... when I was two months old. That's right, January, 1970—when FAE was clued as [From: Scot.]. And before that ... there was no before that. You now know the clues for all three lifetime FAE appearances. For perspective, GAE has appeared thirty-three times, and ... "What the hell is GAE?" you rightly ask (allegedly, Scots for "go"). If we're bringing FAE back, then I think "Neopronoun" is the only reasonable way to go, 'cause if FAE were viable as "fairyworld," believe me, people would've used it, and clued it that way, more than Zero Times.
• 59D: Cohort that grew up with the internet (GEN Z) — starting to get exhausted by all generational labeling and assumptions. There are too many generations now. As a member of Gen X, I apologize. Yes, Baby Boomers came before, but that was a meaningful demographic because ... well, it's in the name. The babies, they boomed. Gen X was just like "kids are different now, let's divide people up." And so on. And so on. And so on. And now those gen divisions are all being defined by tech usage / access. They're arbitrary moments in time. Used to sell stuff and divide people from one another ... usually in order to sell stuff. I know I'm yelling into the wind here (or at a cloud, if you prefer), but I would love the "Gen" crap to all expire, asap. 
• 39D: Film incorrectly announced as Best Picture before "Moonlight" (LA LA LAND) — I enjoyed remembering this fantastic moment of television.

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Onetime leader of the Sinaloa Cartel / THU 3-6-25 / Adriatic port city / Like one with renewed beliefs / Fire breather of myth / Neutrogena dandruff shampoo / Indian crepe served with chutney / Intensifying suffix, in modern slang / Gymnastics star of the 2012 and 2016 Olympics / Mouselike mammal

Constructor: Kiran Pandey

Relative difficulty: Easyish

THEME: "Come again?" — four answers that express repetition or doubleness, represented in the grid by words that are duplicates of the words that precede them:

Theme answers:

• BORN / BORN (i.e. "born again") (17A: Like one with renewed beliefs)
• NATURE / NATURE (i.e. "second nature") (30A: The great outdoors)
• CARBON / CARBON (i.e. "carbon copy") (48A: Exact replica)
• DOWN / DOWN (i.e. "double down") (63A: Strengthen one's commitment)

Word of the Day: EL CHAPO (26A: Onetime leader of the Sinaloa Cartel) —

Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera (Spanish: [xoaˈkin aɾtʃiˈβaldo ɣusˈman loˈeɾa]; born 4 April 1957), commonly known as "El Chapo", is a Mexican former drug lord and a former leader within the Sinaloa Cartel. Guzmán is believed to be responsible for the deaths of over 34,000 people, and was considered to be the most powerful drug trafficker in the world until he was extradited to the United States and sentenced to life in prison. [...] Guzmán was first captured in 1993 in Guatemala and then was extradited and sentenced to 20 years in prison in Mexico for murder and drug trafficking. He bribed multiple prison guards and escaped from a federal maximum-security prison in 2001. His status as a fugitive resulted in an $8.8 million combined reward from Mexico and the U.S. for information leading to his capture, and he was arrested in Mexico in 2014. He escaped prior to formal sentencing in 2015, through a tunnel dug by associates into his jail cell. Mexican authorities recaptured him following a shoot-out in January 2016, and extradited him to the U.S. a year later. In 2019, he was found guilty of a number of criminal charges related to his leadership of the Sinaloa Cartel, was sentenced to life imprisonment, and incarcerated in ADX Florence, Colorado, United States.

• • •

Possibly the easiest Thursday of all time, but I made it way harder on myself by acting like I was walking through a minefield and looking suspiciously at every answer. And by making a couple of dumb mistakes (BORE for BORN (16A: Brought into being), EST for PST (31D: Winter hours in L.A.) (I know very well what time zone "L.A." is in, so some "EST" reflex must've just taken over). I also came down the left side of the grid, so the theme just ... didn't materialize until I was all the way over in the bottom right corner of the grid. Seriously, I did not "get" the theme, or even see a theme answer, until 63A: Strengthen one's commitment ((DOWN) DOWN). I was like "how is this DO-...? Oh. [Looks upgrid] Ohhhhhhhh." And then all the theme answers went zip-bang into place:

Any slowness today was a result of Thursday trepidation (I know there's a theme about to leap out bite me, I just don't know where it is) and the specific route I took through the grid. If I'd just gone over from the NW to the N and worked out BORN somehow, the theme would've (probably) dawned on me sooner, and maybe things would've been even faster. One of the weird things about this puzzle is how the overall cluing is just not up to Thursday levels of difficulty. With a very light theme that's not that hard to discern, this puzzle should probably have had somewhat tougher cluing. The other weird thing was just how light the theme was: BORN NATURE CARBON DOWN. That's the total extent of the theme: 20 squares. I know that their "doubles" are also part of it, but since those first iterations are clued straight, I dunno ... they don't play like theme, so I don't really count them. So all the real interest in this grid is in the long non-thematic Downs, which (by volume) absolutely overwhelm the theme—62 squares worth of long Down action! The theme is clever enough, but it ends up feeling almost incidental. And like I said, once you get the idea, all theme difficulty evaporates immediately. I enjoyed this one a reasonable amount, but I would've liked a little more Thursday thematic punch.

Aside from my two tiny mistakes (see above), the only challenge was remembering / spelling ALY RAISMAN's name. I got the ALY quick enough (that often appears as a standalone crossword answer), but the rest was ... well, everything between "R" and "MAN" was kind of a BLUR (13A: Make less distinct). I also couldn't imagine any [Mouselike mammal]s that fit the ---E- pattern, though E-WASTE took care of the problem pretty fast (by giving me the "W"). Though Nope is one of my favorite movies of recent years, and though I *own* Get Out on DVD, I have so far only ever watched Get Out on other people's screens on an airplane, so I just had to infer SUNKEN PLACE (not hard). Does that term exist outside of Get Out? The puzzle was so easy today that most of that answer just filled itself in from crosses. Nothing else in this puzzle rose about Tuesday level difficulty.

Notes:

• 9A: Neutrogena dandruff shampoo (T-GEL) — they also make a shampoo called T-SAL, which is what I wrote in at first. T-FAL ... is a cookware brand. Not recommended for haircare.
• 21A: Seller of Poäng and Ekenäset chairs (IKEA) — I'm gonna be a superstickler here and say that "Seller" is pretty much a dupe of SELL (53A: Betray, with "out"), and so that clue should probably have been rewritten.
• 67A: Have an inclination (TEND) — had the "E," wrote in LEAN (but kept TEND in mind, so no harm done).
• 50A: Fire breather of myth (CHIMERA) — ANORA won all the Oscars (deservedly so), so you should definitely expect to see ANORA in grids starting soon and then forever. That vowel-consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel pattern will not be denied. I mention ANORA here because it was actually the *second*-best movie I saw in theaters last year. The best best was Alice Rohrwacher's La CHIMERA (which I guess technically came out in 2023, just not in my corner of the world):

• 7D: Adriatic port city (BARI) — I would love to have a world map where the only place names on it are ones I learned from crosswords. DILI (East Timor), the ROSS SEA, ELY (the "cathedral town"), and ... this Adriatic port city (which the puzzle used to rely on a lot more than it does not):

[from xwordinfo]

• 35D: Comedian Vulcano (SAL) — no idea ... which I'm pretty sure I've said before. I'm having deja vu a little right now. Yeah, looks like this guy was a 2022 clue for SAL as well: [Comedian Sal of "Impractical Jokers"]. I'm only writing this all out on the off chance that it will make his name stick. Probably doomed to just get it from crosses every time it shows up. Today, that wasn't hard (though that "A" was the very last square I entered in the grid).
• 57D: Look-alike (TWIN) — and a little bonus theme answer to close things out ... see also REUSE (15A: Find more value from).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Distance traversed by an arrow / WED 02-05-2025 / Console device with triggers and thumbsticks / Character set for electronic communication

Constructor: Kiran Pandey

Relative difficulty: Easy....? (I thought it was hard while solving, but then I saw my time so I guess not)

THEME: SLUSH PILE / DROPS DOWN — A group of circled letters stacked in the middle are the names of precipitation

Theme answers:

• DROPS DOWN clued as [Opens, as a menu ... or a description of this puzzle's circled letters?]
• LEFT BRAIN clued as [Analytical thinker?]
• CARRIES NO WEIGHT clued as [Doesn't really matter]
• CHAI LATTE clued as [Steamed beverage with spices from the Indian subcontinent]
• SLUSH PILE clued as [Common assignment for editorial assistants ... or a description of this puzzle's circled letters?] 

Word of the Day: "bhakti" (HINDU: One who practices bhakti and puja) —

Bhakti (Sanskrit: भक्ति; Pali: bhatti) is a term common in Indian religions which means attachment, fondness for, devotion to, trust, homage, worship, piety, faith, or love. In Indian religions, it may refer to loving devotion for a personal God (like Krishna or Devi), a formless ultimate reality (like Nirguna Brahman or the Sikh God) or for an enlightened being (like a Buddha, a bodhisattva, or a guru).

• • •

Hey friends, happy Malaika MWednesday! I solved this puzzle while eating a slice of chocolate cake. Also, it's important that you all know I initially accidentally typed "I ate this puzzle while solving a slice of chocolate cake." My quest for NYC Slice Of Chocolate Cake That Costs Under $10 is rabid and never-ending. Currently I am polishing off a slice of "Devil in Ganache" cake from Mah-Ze-Dahr Bakery which cost $7.50, or $8.17 with tax. I am literally begging you to give me your sub-$10 NYC chocolate cake slice recs in the comments. I will try every single one of them.

This was a cute Wednesday! Since I am a constructor more than a solver, I immediately had to look at the grid specs. This had 72 words, which is in line with a themeless puzzle (themed puzzles most commonly have 78 words), but it had a higher-than-average number of three-letter words (20) and a slightly higher-than-average number of blocks (40; the canonical themed puzzles has 38, and themelesses have fewer). I noticed the word count while solving, but I didn't notice the other two stats. They're just fun for me to file away in my brain.

It's a fun treat when a puzzle has two revealers, sort of a two-for-the-price of one situation. I really struggle coming up with wordplay, so finding a double link is very impressive to me. The last puzzle with two revealers I remember is this one, although I'm sure there have been others more recently. Do any come to mind for you? Here, I like the second revealer more than the first. SLUSH PILE is a much more evocative phrase than DROPS DOWN, and it more accurately describes what we're seeing. Those slushy things are all piled up in the center. I don't know that they're coming "down," it feels more that they're going across... but I'm nitpicking.

We've had some SNOW in the city recently, here's my beautiful BIKESHARE draped in downy precipitation

Elsewhere, we got some really nice long answers like BOSS LEVEL, WAFFLE FRY, ROT IN HELL and BIKE SHARE. I got a little slowed down by the perpetual "Is it emend or amend?" question, but the crosses helped me out. And I liked the clue [Hawke or Crowe] for ACTOR.

Bullets:

• [You got me there] for TOUCHE — Ugh, I can't remember this reference, but there was a book or movie where a character pronounced this "tushy" the first time they said it aloud to the amusement of others
• [Appendage for a morning glory] for TENDRIL — The word appendage really threw me off here; I associate those with human body parts
• [Gives the thumbs up] for OKS — In tech jobs, we often shorthand this by saying L/SGTM, which means "looks / sounds good to me." I love this term (to me it totally unambiguously means "Yes, I am saying you can proceed with my permission"), and wish people used it more in our day-to-day.
• [Audience member who might be in on the trick] for PLANT — Nothing to say here except that I loved this clue! Such a vivid picture.

xoxo Malaika

Okay, you've made it to the end. You can optionally stick around for my CHAI rant. "Chai" is the Hindi word for tea, and some pedants get grumpy when you say "chai tea" ("That's like saying "tea tea"!!!" they whine) or when "chai" is used as shorthand for the warm, earthy spices (ginger, cinnamon, cardamom) commonly found in masala chai, as it is here. (A "chai latte" might have coffee alongside tea.)

But I wholeheartedly disagree! American English is filled with loan words from other languages that we've twisted and corrupted and embraced to become our own-- that rocks!! And it rocks especially when we do so with food words, weaving immigrant flavors into our own language. That's why we call one hot toasty sandwich a panini (it should be "panino") and why we call one cornmeal dumpling a tamale (it should be "tamal"). CHAI LATTE is a particularly cute example to me, as it's made up of not one but two loan words. That's the American dream, baby.

Any other food loan words you can think of?

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

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Kudos to an eagle-eyed proofreader / MON 6-17-24 / 2018 Childish Gambino hit that won the Grammy for Song of the Year / Locale for beers on draft / Queer-friendly high school dance

Constructor: Kiran Pandey

Relative difficulty: Easy (solved Downs-only)

THEME: "AYE AYE, CAPTAIN" (55A: Affirmative at sea ... or a phonetic hint to what's found sequentially in 20-, 31- and 41-Across) — theme answers are familiar phrases in which two "I"s precede a famous "Captain":

Theme answers:

• "THIS IS AMERICA" (20A: 2018 Childish Gambino hit that won the Grammy for Song of the Year)
• FINDING NEMO (31A: Pixar film that takes place mostly underwater)
• FISHING HOOK (41A: Holder of bait)

Word of the Day: NIH (35D: Medical research org.) —

The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH, is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late 1880s and is now part of the United States Department of Health and Human Services. Many NIH facilities are located in Bethesda, Maryland, and other nearby suburbs of the Washington metropolitan area, with other primary facilities in the Research Triangle Park in North Carolina and smaller satellite facilities located around the United States. The NIH conducts its own scientific research through the NIH Intramural Research Program (IRP) and provides major biomedical research funding to non-NIH research facilities through its Extramural Research Program.

As of 2013, the IRP had 1,200 principal investigators and more than 4,000 postdoctoral fellows in basic, translational, and clinical research, being the largest biomedical research institution in the world, while, as of 2003, the extramural arm provided 28% of biomedical research funding spent annually in the U.S., or about US$26.4 billion.

The NIH comprises 27 separate institutes and centers of different biomedical disciplines and is responsible for many scientific accomplishments, including the discovery of fluoride to prevent tooth decay, the use of lithium to manage bipolar disorder, and the creation of vaccines against hepatitis, Haemophilus influenzae (HIB), and human papillomavirus (HPV).

In 2019, the NIH was ranked number two in the world, behind Harvard University, for biomedical sciences in the Nature Index, which measured the largest contributors to papers published in a subset of leading journals from 2015 to 2018. (wikipedia)

• • •

Well the "captain" part is solid enough but the "I" part is pretty weak, and the theme clues play pretty fast and loose with the word "sequentially." You do get an "I" and then (several letters later) another "I" and then a "Captain," but the intervening letters between those "I"s kinda mucks up the "sequentially" claim, at least a little. Sometimes the "I"s appear in one word, but one time they appear in two different words. And then one time there's actually a third "I" inside one of the "Captain"s. It's a cute idea, but the execution just doesn't feel dead-on. Also, it's usually FISH HOOK, right? I recognize that FISHING HOOK is a valid and not uncommon variant, but the -ING part feels contrived to get that second "I. The wikipedia entry is for "fish hook" (or "fishhook"). There's no fatal flaw to this puzzle, just a lot of little dings and dents. The fact that the puzzle felt the need to circle the "I"s feels like an acknowledgment that the puzzle was maybe not landing perfectly. I only wish there had been some way to accommodate my favorite captain. I'm speaking of course of Captain Merrill Stubing of The Love Boat. My wife and I are currently in the middle of watching the entire run of the show. We just finished the very special Season 3 episode where Captain Stubing finally goes and claims his biological daughter Vicki from her aunt and uncle who are raising her now that Vicki's mom is dead, and who somehow conveniently live somewhere in Mexico (!?) (lord knows what happened to Vicki's stepdad). Anyway, today's "I"-"I"-"captain"s are OK, I guess, but for my money, VICKI STUBING beats 'em all. (Unless MINI UNDERPANTS are a thing, then that wins)

Perhaps unsurprisingly, in a puzzle focused on "I"s, there are too many "I"s in this puzzle. The proper noun, I mean. I CARE, I CALL, I MEAN IT. I ... think that's too many. Otherwise, the fill seemed OK. Adequate. "NICE CATCH" (33D: Kudos to an eagle-eyed proofreader) and TOMATILLO give the grid some much needed SPICE. Speaking of SPICE, I had SPIFF there for a bit (10D: Zhuzh (up)). I think of zhuzhing as adding more spiffiness than spiciness ("spiciness" kinda has sexy implications that zhuzhing alone does not). I guess I should love GAY PROM but that answer just made me sad. Can the gay kids not go to regular prom? Are there Queer-unfriendly dances? I mean, of course there are, that's a stupid question. I guess GAY PROM must be a non-school-sponsored thing for kids who don't feel welcome at their cruddy heteronormative homophobic school dances. Let's see ... [Uses internet] ... Yes, that's exactly what it is (there was one this past weekend in the Greater Cleveland area! Hello, Cleveland!), though it looks like QUEER PROM is *by far* the more common term. So hurray to the concept, but mild boo to "gay" instead of the more inclusive "queer." Still, more hurray than boo. I'll save the real "Boo!" for schools that give queer kids any shit at all about going to prom with whomever they want, in whatever fancy get-up they choose.

The Downs-only experience was pretty uneventful today. I weirdly spelled POLI-SCI as if it were a major involving *many* sciences (or the study of polysexuality) (POLY SCI!), so that was interesting (5D: College major for government studies, informally). I also had OVERT before FAMED (31D: Widely known) (a truly terrible guess) and BREW PUB before TAPROOM (9D: Locale for beers on draft) (actually a great guess, don't feel bad about it at all). Already told you about the SPIFF-for-SPICE thing, so ... yeah, that's all I got. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. listening to my favorite DJ Evan Funk Davies (efd) filling in for Clay Pigeon on WFMU this morning and this happened ♥️

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Deity from whose hair flows the river Ganga / THU 12-28-23 / 1960s-70s archetype / Thai hot-and-sour soup / Cereal with a Mega Stuf version / Early employer of Steve Jobs / Boy's name in a #1 Beatles hit / Collection of traits necessary for "The achievement of great things," as theorized by Machiavelli / Biblical figure who is compared to a hairy garment

Constructor: Kiran Pandey

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (mostly Easy, but a couple of these movie titles might be elusive for many solvers...)

THEME: Movie? Magic! — ordinary phrases are clued as if they were very brief movie reviews (with movie title first and one-word assessment following)

Theme answers:

• GREASE FIRE (17A: "That 1978 musical? Amazing movie!") (Grease? Fire!)
• UPTIGHT (25A: "That 2009 Pixar film? Incredibly well made!") (Up? Tight!)
• FROZEN SOLID (36A: "That 2013 Disney movie? Pretty decent!") (Frozen? Solid!)
• MOONLIT (51A: "That 2009 science fiction flick? Freaking epic!") (Moon? Lit!)
• DRIVE CRAZY (61A: "That 2011 neo-noir? Insanely good!") (Drive? Crazy!)

Word of the Day: MOON (from 51A) —

Moon is a 2009 science fiction film directed by Duncan Jones (in his directorial debut) and written by Nathan Parker from a story by Jones. The film follows Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell), a man who experiences a personal crisis as he nears the end of a three-year solitary stint mining helium-3 on the far side of the Moon. Kevin Spacey voices Sam's robot companion, GERTY. Moon premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival and was released in selected cinemas in New York and Los Angeles on 12 June 2009. The release was expanded to additional theatres in the United States on 10 July and to the United Kingdom on 17 July. A follow-up film containing an epilogue to the film's events, Mute, was released in 2018. A third installment, a graphic novel called Madi: Once Upon A Time in the Future, was released in 2020.

Moon was modestly budgeted and grossed just under $10 million worldwide, but was well received by critics. Rockwell's performance found praise. The movie won numerous film critic and film festival awards and was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best British Film, and won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation in 2010. (wikipedia)

• • •

[Air? Cool!]

Really like this theme concept. It's ... tight. Generally. There are a couple of ways in which you could say the puzzle wobbles. The first is that the last "review" ("CRAZY!") is an outlier, in that all the other one-word assessments are uniformly and unambiguously positive. They are all one-word slang terms for "excellent." "Lit" runs more to "exciting," but if you call a movie "lit," that's always going to be a rave. Whereas "Crazy," yeah, maybe, but maybe not. Seems like it's in a fundamentally different category than the other one-word "reviews." The clue tries to force the issue by saying "Insanely good," but I just don't think "CRAZY!" means "good" the way the others mean "good." The bigger wobble today has to do with the relative fame of the movies, specifically the relative fame of MOON, which ... had critical success, and is known to scifi aficionados, but is not in the same solar system, not in the same universe, famewise, as the other movies involved in this theme. OK, maybe it's in the same *universe* as DRIVE, but FROZEN, UP, and GREASE are all iconic. Huge hits, enduring fame. DRIVE's fame is somewhat more modest than those Big Three, but DRIVE is a modern noir classic and it stars Ryan Gosling, so it has legs. I don't know that MOON has legs. I hadn't even heard of it when it got chosen as the movie for my Pandemic Movie Club (now just Movie Club) a few years back. It's good, but that's not the point. Famewise, it's a giant outlier today. I think it's famous enough to pass, but we're talking about wobbles, and it makes the theme wobble. A little. But for me, a movie fan who knew all the movies involved, this theme was enjoyable. (Still never seen FROZEN—my daughter's princess phase was in the rearview by 2013)

The fill on this one is mostly ... solid. Not a fan of company names, especially the names of exploitive dystopian behemoths like DOORDASH (see "Controversies, lawsuits, and criticisms" here, for starters), but you can't say DOORDASH / KWANZAA isn't a fresh and original pair of long answers. I also liked TOM YUM—yum, indeed (23A: Thai hot-and-sour soup) OREOOS is the worst of the crosswordese cereals (bring back KIX!), and every time I see it, I think "wow, the constructor must've been desperate." Luckily it's the worst thing in sight in that NE corner. Bad fill can be tolerable as long as it's supporting a lot of good fill. My main criticism of the fill today involves STAY UP— (50D: What many children are told not to do on Christmas Eve, but encouraged to do on New Year's Eve) [sidenote: who the hell is *encouraging* their kids to STAY UP, ever?]. I'd normally say that duping "UP" is not that big a deal, as long as the "UP"s are in different parts of the grid, but today, with "UP" being a theme element, I really think the rest of the grid should've had a "no extra UPs" policy. Duping is always an iffy practice. Duping some short words, some of the time, is excusable. But you really shouldn't dupe theme elements. Today, STAY UP becomes STAY IN no problem. You dupe the "IN" from "I'M IN," but that's better than duping a theme element. And you could still get a New Year's Eve clue out of it, e.g. [What I have done for every New Year's Eve as far back as I can remember] ...

[Is this ... MOON?]

The puzzle seemed generally easy today, but I struggled mightily in one place because of a particularly painful trap I fell into. I was flying along and off the "N" in TAINT I wrote in C'MON at 7D: "Let's do this thing!" and then confirmed it (ughhh) with TIMID (15A: Like a mouse). So C'MON was locked in tight, and seemed indisputably correct. It fit perfectly, both sense-wise and grid-wise. And then I hit the "Deity" (5A: Deity from whose hair flows the river Ganga) and was staring down SHC- ... and my first instinct was to doubt not C'MON but HIFI! (6D: Preference for an audiophile). Gah! I got ADE easy, but the whole area up there was made much, much worse by VIRTU (!?!?!), what?  (8D: Collection of traits necessary for "The achievement of great things," as theorized by Machiavelli). You can tell by that paragraph-long and overly detailed clue that you've got an obscure answer on your hands there. I thought the theme would fix it, but GREASE ... what? I had GREASEFO-E. Looking back now, I really should've seen the problem. But I truly did not. "GREASE... DOPE!" Nope. I had to back in there after getting the terminal "U" in VIRTU from "UP." Then the "V" gave me SHIVA (d'oh! of course...) and finally "I'M IN!" showed up. I assume the "I'M IN" clue was written specifically to elicit C'MON as a guess. Or I'm just a weirdo who fell in his own self-made trap. Both possible.

That's all. More Holiday Pet Pics now. Actually, today, just one, and the letter that came with it. RIP, Kairos, you beautiful shepherd baby.

Hi Rex,

Thanks as ever for your wonderful, illuminating, and so often vindicating blog!

My family had to put down our beloved dog today [Dec. 14], just shy of his ninth Christmas. Although he couldn’t do the NYT crossword, he loved sitting at our feet while we did :) Here’s him last year waiting to unwrap his frisbees:

[Thanks for sharing Kairos with me, Tess]

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. BINGE is [Experience four seasons in one day, say?] because the seasons are TV seasons, and you are BINGE-watching

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