Nimble, zigzagging maneuver / FRI 1-16-26 / Goal-oriented global org.? / Shortest-reigning English monarch (9 days) / Leading character on social media? / Some terrarium denizens / White House partner, for short / Classic 1926 poem associated with the Harlem Renaissance / Place for trading stories? / Dialect featured in the literature of Alice Walker and Toni Morrison

Constructor: Kyle Dolan

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: JINK (25D: Nimble, zigzagging maneuver) —

1

: a quick evasive turn : slip

2

jinks plural : pranks, frolics

especially : high jinks

Besides the fact that jink first appears in Scottish English, the exact origins of this shifty little word are unknown. What can be said with certainty is that the word has always expressed a quick or unexpected motion. For instance, in two poems from 1785, Robert Burns uses jink as a verb to indicate both the quick motion of a fiddler's elbow and the sudden disappearance of a cheat around a corner. In the 20th century, the verb caught on with air force pilots and rugby players, who began using it to describe their elusive maneuvers to dodge opponents and enemies. Jink can also be used as a noun meaning "a quick evasive turn" or, in its plural form, "pranks." The latter use was likely influenced by the term high jinks, which originally referred in the late 17th century to a Scottish drinking game and later came to refer to horseplay. (merriam-webster.com)

• • •

Well, I got the "difficulty" I've been looking for, but unfortunately it was not accompanied by much joy. The marquee fill is solid but not particularly exciting, and most of the "difficulty" was achieved with proper-noun trivia, or awkward cluing, or ... "JINK," whatever the hell that is. We're coming up on the 40th anniversary of the last time JINK appeared in the NYTXW, which tells you something about its currency. Yeesh. No one should need a "J" that badly.  I'm actually not sure if the puzzle was more challenging than usual historically, or just more challenging than the Fridays that have been served up in recent years. All I know is this took me at least 2x as long as yesterday's puzzle, and it had none of the whoosh and zoom and sparkle that I really love in a Friday. Four highly segmented corners prevented a kind of free flow through the grid, and the banks of three long answers in each corner, while they hold up just fine, don't really sing. HERDING CATS was a high, but the high of that answer was offset by the low of its symmetrical counterpart, GETS A BAD RAP, an answer which EATS A BAD SANDWICH, for sure. It's a fine phrase, but clunky as a standalone answer. No hope on YOKO (4D: "The Memory Police" author ___ Ogawa) or "GLORY"—who remembers Best Original Songs? Can you remember last year's Best Original Song? I'll give you a hint: it was from Emilia Pérez. Go ahead, take your time [Jeopardy! music plays]. Time's up. We were looking for "What is 'EL MAL'?" Holy crap, that's gonna be in the grid some day, isn't it? Five letters, all common ... OK, just remember that you heard it here first (or you're hearing it again, whatever): "EL MAL," Best Original Song of 2024 (awarded at the 2025 Oscars). GLORY is such a nice, ordinary word. So many ways to go. Trivia = [frowny face]. 

If the long answers in the corners aren't particularly exciting, they are remarkably clean, I'll give them that. There's something to be said for that. Well, a space mission with an RRN (Random Roman Numeral) isn't that great, but the rest are all fine. No tortured phrases, no niche slang. The NW corner is probably the strongest of the lot, with a reasonably clever "?" clue on BABY SHOWER (1A: Coming out party?) over two rock-solid colloquialisms ("ANYONE HOME?," SINK OR SWIM). Outside of trivia ignorance, my trouble today came from either clue vagueness, clue badness, or perilous parsing adventures. Because I didn't have the "J" from JINK (ugh), I absolutely could not see JANE GREY. I should've remembered that she was monarch for a few days—I remember coming across and mentioning that fact on the blog just last years—but I didn't. Not only did I know have the "J" (JINK), I didn't have the "G" ("GLORY," bah!), and so both initials just weren't there for me. When I saw it ended in "Y," my immediate feeling wasn't "Oh, it's JANE GREY!" Instead, it was, "well, SAYS must be wrong—the monarch must end in a Roman numeral." So I pulled SAYS. Idiocy. I knew what 43A: Leading character on social media? was getting at instantly, but when AT SIGN wouldn't fit, I just ... blanked. I know that the answer should be AT SIGN because that is how it has appeared in the NYTXW ten times now (7 in singular, 3 in plural). Whereas this is just the second AT SYMBOL. Y'all should decide if it's a sign or a symbol and stick to it. Please. 

No idea what FOREX is (51A: Market for currencies, informally). Sounds like a condom brand (it's actually short for "Foreign Exchange Market"). Thought FAUX was FAKE (39D: Like leatherette). Could not have known at that point that FAKE was already in play (with FAKE PLANTS). Honestly spent a few seconds wondering what a CART RAILER was before I mentally attached the "T" to "RAILER" to get TRAILER, ugh. Thought the Welsh "Ian" was EWAN (which looks a lot like EVAN, and looks kinda Welsh, frankly, but is actually a Scottish "Owen"). Cluing FLOTUS as [White House partner, for short] is ridiculous, since no one calls him "White House." FLOTUS's "partner" is POTUS. Like ... by definition. Those are the equivalents. I guess the idea is supposed to be "Partner (of the President) who resides in the White House." So not "partner of" but "partner in." Really awful, however you slice it. I was slow in the NE too, but mostly for good old-fashioned clue ambiguity. WAGES was vague/hard. WRAP was vague/hard (11A: Finish (up)). GAS CAN was vague/hard (24A: Trunk item). The "PET" part of PET SNAKES was not at all expected (14D: Some terrarium denizens). This was all frustrating, but it's the kind of frustrating I can live with. Friday-level frustrating. It's fine. I would love to give a thumbs-up to "LET'S ROCK" for originality and ... just ... colloquial vim, I guess, but I hate that expression. Sounds corny. I actually like "LET'S ROLL" a lot better. Anyway, sometimes an answer just nails-on-chalkboards you and there's no accounting for it. Not an objective fault of the puzzle. Just ... incompatibility.

Bullets:

• 19A: Classic 1926 poem associated with the Harlem Renaissance ("I, TOO") — longtime solvers will fill this in automatically. It has crosswordese status, for sure. I can imagine novice solvers being stumped by this one, especially crossing (as it does) two other proper nouns (ANITA, YOKO), as well as the startlingly hard-(for me)-to-parse BY NOW (3D: Already). Really really wanted one word there.
• 21A: Creatures that can turn into humans on land, in Scottish folklore (SEALS) — real Scottish puzzle today. Scotland in the EVAN clue. JINK is a "word" favored by Burns that first appears in Scottish English, and now ... Scottish wereseals. I have some vague memory of this bit of folklore from having watched John Sayles's The Secret of Roan Inish (1994). Yes, here we go: "It is centered on the Irish and Orcadian folklores of selkies—seals that can shed their skins to become human" (wikipedia). SELKIES would be a good grid word. Zero NYTXW appearances to date. 

• 38A: Place for trading stories? (BOOK FAIR) — sigh, you don't "trade" stories at a BOOK FAIR. You do "trade" in stories, by selling them. Is that what was meant? Awkward.
• 54A: Hand count? (FIVE) — because we all have five hands. Science. Actually, you can plausibly interpret this clue two ways. First—and probably most likely—a single hand allows you to count to FIVE (five digits on each hand, barring table saw injuries). The second interpretation, which I only thought of just now, is that a typical poker "hand" has FIVE cards in it. So your "Hand count" would be FIVE—five cards in your hand. Did anyone read the clue as poker-related? I don't think it's the intended meaning, but it "works."
• 31D: Secret offering? (DEODORANT) — Secret is a brand. A brand of DEODORANT. 
• 50D: Makes do for a while? (PERMS) — oof, real awkward. Makes (a hair)do (that lasts) for a while. 
• 16A: Dialect featured in the literature of Alice Walker and Toni Morrison (AAVE) — African-American Vernacular English. It's been in the puzzle a few times now. 
• 54D: Goal-oriented global org.? (FIFA) — aren't these the corrupt assholes who gave White House (which is apparently what we're calling him now) a completely made-up "Peace Prize"? Yep, the president of FIFA is apparently a close ally of White House. Meanwhile, White House continues to attack citizens of his own country with untrained incompetent sadistic goons who aren't fit for any other kind of employment. This week—flashbangs and tear gas thrown into a van filled with six children, one of whom required CPR. Giving White House a "peace prize" ... that really out-Orwells Orwell (you know, the guy who wrote ANIMAL FARM (59A: Novel whence the line "four legs good, two legs bad"))

["Too scared to join the military / Too dumb to be a cop"]

That’s all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Showy purple flower / SAT 11-15-25 / Condition of Freud's "Rat Man," in brief / Brand associated with push-ups / Form of literature coined by Sartre / Unable to move while holding a sleeping baby, in slang / High point of 1950s car design? / Westminster Abbey has one named after King Henry VII / L.G.B.T.Q. vacation destination on Cape Cod, for short

Constructor: Kyle Dolan

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Chick COREA (37A: Chick of jazz) —

Armando Anthony "Chick" Corea (June 12, 1941 – February 9, 2021) was an American jazz pianist, composer, bandleader, and occasional percussionist. His compositions "Spain", "500 Miles High", "La Fiesta", "Armando's Rhumba", and "Windows" are considered jazz standards.

As a member of the Miles Davis band in the late 1960s, Corea participated in the birth of jazz fusion. In the 1970s he formed Return to Forever. Along with McCoy Tyner, Herbie Hancock and Keith Jarrett, Corea is considered one of the foremost pianists of the post-John Coltrane era.

Corea continued to collaborate frequently while exploring different musical styles throughout the 1980s and 1990s. He won 28 Grammy Awards and was nominated for the award 77 times. (wikipedia)

• • •

[mom, me, a long long time ago]

Between NAPTRAPPED and the PUDGY fingers, this puzzle felt like it was written by someone with a little baby at home (1A: Unable to move while holding a sleeping baby, in slang / 48D: Like a baby's fingers, perhaps). Or someone who lives near a baby or has friends who have a baby. Undoubtedly a CUTIE. It was nice to begin and end with babies being babies, though I have never in my nearly 56 years on this earth (11 days to go!) heard the term NAPTRAPPED. I have, however, experienced it, though these days it predominantly involves cats ... which are kinds of "babies." We certainly call them "baby" enough. Well, the little one, Ida the white cat, she's "baby" more than Alfie the tabby, who is more of a "big boy." I often ask them, when I see them after not seeing them for a while, "Who's this baby?" The answer, of course, is them. They're the baby. It's kind of like when you ask your dog, "Who's a good dog?" Your dog, the dog you're talking to, that's who's a good dog. Anyway, if a cat falls asleep on you, you are not allowed to move, this is law. Many an activity (like dinner) has been significantly delayed because one or the other of us is like [points to lap or chest where cat is] "can't move." CATTRAPPED. As for NAPTRAPPED, if it's in the puzzle, I guess someone somewhere is using the term. Because it's adorable, and because it describes a real phenomenon that should have a name, I'm happy to allow it.

[CATTRAPPED]

This puzzle was just as easy for me as yesterday's puzzle, but today is Saturday, which should be much harder, so I feel cheated once again of the struggle I crave on this day. The names that came at me were all very familiar. Not a one of them new to me. We don't have The Mount Rushmore of Crossword Names, but we have A Mount Rushmore: SHEL Silverstein, ERNO Laszlo, Chick COREA, and JET LI. I've seen the real Mount Rushmore, and it's impressive, but if those presidents were replaced tomorrow by SHEL ERNO COREA and JET LI, I'd be planning my trip to South Dakota right now. 

I even managed to remember OTIS Day and the Knights, though I had help from the "O" there. The only thing I had (some) trouble remembering was PHLOX—stared at that "HL" like "uh ... that's impossible," but then it wasn't—and RIYALS (they put the "Y" in there, do they? Well I'll be sure to remember th- nope, already forgotten). That RIYALS / PANELIST / FISH FRY / LLC was probably the stickiest part of the grid for me. I had the -ST at the end of 41A: Game show figure and wanted some kind of HOST. Wanted the [Close of business?] to be ESS (I've been solving too many cryptics, i.e. just the right amount of cryptics). FISH FRY was easier, because I understood the FISH part re: Lent, but I didn't know the FRY was particularly "Lenten" (39D: Lenten event). We have this roving business around here, Doug's FISH FRY, which is basically a truck out of which fried fish is served, usually in some parking lot, always as part of some fund-raising event. It's the only thing I think of when I hear FISH FRY, and it's not particularly (or at all) "Lenten," so ... yeah, hesitated at the FRY part, but it fit, and felt right, so ... there we go. I like it as an answer. 

Other things I liked: the whole SE corner. FLAT-FOOTED / ROLLICKING / "YES, INDEEDY!" goes through a lot of looks and moods for a little corner. And I really like that the crosses keeping the corner together really hold up. I cannot quibble with a one of them. In every corner, in fact, I'm impressed that the short stuff holding the long stuff in place almost never got gunky. I think I let out two "ooh, nice"s. Once early on, as I was just getting my footing:

And then shortly thereafter, when I realized DO DIRTY was going to be an answer (10D: Betray). A wonderful, colorful colloquial expression. With apologies to Sartre, I had no idea the ANTI-NOVEL was a thing—can't say I've read many of those (13D: Form of literature coined by Sartre). But otherwise, everything from SHONDALAND to WONDERBRA was pretty dang familiar to me. Once again, I wish it had all been harder, but that's the editor's fault. The grid is very nice.

[3D: L.G.B.T.Q. vacation destination on Cape Cod, for short]

Bullets:

• 20A: It's used for hair therapy (HOT OIL) — having no hair myself, hair therapy is not something I think of often ever. This answer was hard to parse because I had -OTOI- and assumed it was one word. I was like "that's not how you spell LOTION." No, no it's not.
• 25A: Swear off, with "of" (REPENT) — I don't like these as equivalents. Swearing off is much more informal and non-moralistic than REPENT (of). Do you REPENT of sweets, or alcohol? Repenting is for sins and it strongly implies regret. If I swore off cocktails tomorrow, first, please know that it is against my will, that either a doctor or someone with a gun is making me, and second, I would have no regrets. Every cocktail I drank—perfect. 
• 30A: Win dough? (PRIZE MONEY) —I was trying to understand the "?" here. I get the literal part—"dough" you get from a "win" is PRIZE MONEY, but what was I supposed to be hearing / seeing with that clue? Answer: it sounds like "window." So, you know, if someone was reading the clues to you, you might've been fooled (?).
• 40D: High point of 1950s car design? (TAIL FIN) — not a part of most FISH FRYs.
• 50A: Westminster Abbey has one named after King Henry VII (CHAPEL) — Henry VII was the first monarch in the Tudor dynasty. After the defeat of Richard III, it goes him, the wife killer, then it gets choppy—Edward VI for a few years, then Lady Jane Grey for nine days, then Bloody Mary (and Philip, technically), who tried to return the country to Catholicism (sometimes violently, hence her nickname), and after a few years of that we finally get Elizabeth (who reigned for a relative eternity—almost 45 years). Good luck remembering all the bits there between HVIII and EI. 

• 30D: Places to keep play things (PROP ROOMS) — this makes me think of my daughter, who has spent a lot of time in PROP ROOMS, and who will be home from her Theater MFA program in less than two weeks! My birthday and Thanksgiving and the Girl's Return, woo hoo! That's a hell of a week. Let's end where we began—with PUDGY fingers!:

[Penelope, Ella, me, ca. 2001]

That's enough 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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Sockdolager / SAT 10-8-22 / Frigga portrayer in Thor / Animal crossing fox whose name references a legendary comedian / Sudden effect of a cloud passing / Rightmost symbol on Alaska's state flag / Second line of a child's joke / Home to many John Constable works

Constructor: Kyle Dolan

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: REMY Ma (55A: Rap artist ___ Ma) —

Reminisce Mackie (née Smith; born May 30, 1980), known professionally as Remy Ma, is an American rapper. Discovered by Big Pun, she came to prominence for her work as a member of Fat Joe's group, Terror Squad. In 2006, she released her debut studio album There's Something About Remy: Based on a True Story, which became a modest success, peaking at number 33 on the Billboard 200 chart. Ma's most commercially successful songs include "Whuteva", "Ante Up (Remix)", "Lean Back", "Conceited", and "All the Way Up".

She is one of only four multiple winners of the BET Award for Best Female Hip-Hop Artist, which she won in 2005 and 2017. Ma is the recipient of two Vibe awards, two Source awards, and has been nominated for three Grammy awards. Since 2015, she has starred on VH1's reality series Love & Hip Hop: New York, alongside her husband Papoose. (wikipedia)

• • •

If you look at this grid, it looks fine. Solid. Lots of long answers, no real junk. Well, one bit of long junk, but we'll get to that. For the most part, grid looks healthy. But the solving experience was strangely unpleasant, and that's (almost) entirely down to the editorial voice, i.e. the cluing.  "?" clue crossing "?" clue *crossing* "?" clue *adjacent to* yet another "?" clue, very early on. There are only five such clues in the entire puzzle, but somehow four of them are wadded up together in the NW (Pop tribute? / Someone to push around? / Show runner? / Bad time to take stock?). These clues are notoriously [shrug]-inducing at first glance, so you move to crosses ... only to find it's just more "?" clues. Ugh. When "?" clues are spaced out, and (esp.) when they really, truly land, I like them quite a bit. But this clumping of them all up front sapped a lot of my good will. I *love* Friday and Saturday puzzles—if you read regularly, you know these are the ones I'm most likely to enjoy, the ones most likely to shine (sidenote: what this means is that themed puzzles are actually very hard to do well, which is why I love and respect well-executed themes, even when they are really simple). But today's puzzle just didn't deliver for me. Some of it was simple demographics, i.e. I don't care about many of these things. Marvel movies, for instance, or Animal Crossing, LOL. No, not my thing. I did like how the Animal Crossing clue at least gave me a chance to think about REDD Foxx, that was fun. But "Thor," no. Well, I saw untold Marvel movies before I finally got tired of being disappointed and just gave up. I even saw "Thor," I think. But who can remember any individual Marvel movie? Anyway, I know who RENE RUSSO is, fine, I can get her from crosses, I can do this puzzle, but none of it is really speaking to me. The bigger problem, however, as I say, was the cluing, which was hard to understand and frequently had no payoff (bad combo). 

Sometimes "?" clues work. I liked [Pop tribute?] for SODA TAX because it's on the money, and the answer itself is interesting. The clue looks like one (real) thing, but ends up being another (real) thing. Unexpected, clever, good. But the BEAR MARKET clue, eerrrrgughwoof, ouch (19A: Bad time to take stock?). I had the BEAR and no idea because I could not get BEAR to square with "time." BEAR ... SEASON? That's a time. A hunting time. But I could not think of any "times" that started with BEAR. The whole idea of "time" = MARKET, my grammatically sensitive brain just could not process. Markets exist in time, but I don't think of them *as* times. This is where "?" clues get irritating: when they're hard ... and then the reveal leaves you feeling "what? come on..." rather than "oh, yeah, good one." SODA TAX = "oh, yeah, good one." BEAR MARKET, yeesh. Worse, far worse was the "?" clue on WEST (34A: What was once due to American pioneers?). So "due" is an oft-played with word in crossword clues, esp. when it's the Italian word for "two" in disguise, as exemplified in the classic crossword clue, [It's past due] for TRE. But I can't make the Italian work in today's clue. I get it down to -EST, still no idea. As you can see (in the grid screenshot, above), I basically end the puzzle at this square, getting the "W" in WEST from WAY AHEAD (34D: Unlikely to be caught). But WEST, man, I can't tell you how groany that is—worse, it's just ... arbitrary and weird. Pioneers headed west, sure, but "due" West? West is not "due" to the pioneers any more than it is to anyone standing on the globe. Also, the grammar is preposterous. Due west is due west no matter who you are or what you're doing. It's due no more to the pioneers than to you or me. "Once due?" Why would due west stop being due west? You can make this due pun some other way, some way that makes some kind of sense and is not an elaborate, jury-rigged, duct-taped fantasia of a clue. [Ye old name?] = WEST. There. You can have that one for free.

VUVUZELAS feels like an answer that thinks it's being current but is actually being very 2010 or whenever that word entered the general lexicon as a result of fan's blowing them at one of the World Cups, I forget which (oh, look, South Africa, 2010! Nailed it). I've seen the answer a number of times and it was a gimme;  it's basically lost any freshness or luster it might've had. It had its moment, the moment passed. I realize I am basically describing half of the answers in any given crossword, but somehow, VUVUZELAS seems frozen in a very particular moment in time. Apparently they can cause serious hearing damage. Just FYI. Hardest thing about the puzzle ended up being the fact that there were So Many answers where I would get the first word and have no idea what was supposed to follow. Here's the grid, at peak "What Is The Next Word!?!?"

As you can see, I've got BEAR something, DRY something, SUN something, and PET something all lined up and ... not moving forward. I had DRY HANDS at first. So I was stuck in a lot of places, and stuck in this very specific, very irritating kind of way. Four (4!) different answers where the first word doesn't give me the next? That's some very bad luck. Worst moment of the puzzle for me, though, came when struggling mightily to make any sense of the SW. Bad enough that I don't really truly know what SEA NETTLE or SUNBURST are ... they seem like familiar words, but I did not know the mere clearing of cloud cover was a SUNBURST, for instance. Sounds more ... astronomical. Anyway, rough section. Never would've called BACOS a "meat substitute" (I might've thought it was actually bacon). The clue on ZEROSTAR was brutal (good, but brutal) (33D: Awful, or worse). Even after I got the "Z" from the "oh is that how we're spelling it?" ZHUZH, I had no idea. And speaking of problems with the editorial voice / cluing, what the hell is "Sockdolager"? It's so awful to use one of these olde-timey words no one knows, esp. for a word which is itself olde-timey (though at least familiar) (LULU). I know bocks and lagers and the actor Clu Gulager (RIP), but "Sockdolager," oof, that is up there with the most nonsense word I've ever seen in a clue. It's like the clue is *trying* to make the experience unpleasant. And then ... all these SW answers I've been discussing run through, or are adjacent to, the Real problem in this SW corner, which is ... PET CUSHION. Cushion!?!? I had PET and could not make *anything* out of the latter part. There are dog beds and cat beds, but PET (?) CUSHION (?), er, maybe for your SEA NETTLE? Maybe it's a marketing thing, where said "cushions" are made to be used by all manner of creatures. But in reality, in your house, they are dog and/or cat beds. Cushion, jeez. "Where's the dog?" "She's on her PET CUSHION." No. Never.

[CLU GULAGER! LEE MARVIN! JOHN CASSAVETES! ANGIE DICKINSON!]

Gonna go have coffee with my cat now. She has "cushions" galore to choose from, but she doesn't use them. She's more a couch / floor / lap / paper bag kind of gal. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Portmanteau unit of computing information / FRI 7-8-22 / Dog that's a cross of two French-named breeds / Insect with a delicate nest / River for which a European capital is named / Pocket-size medical tools / pre-marriage name of 1940s-50s first lady / Point oceanic spot farthest from land / Lyre-playing great-granddaughter of 8-Down / Something a provocateur opposes

Constructor: Kyle Dolan

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging 

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: BITON (50D: Dog that's a cross of two French-named breeds) —

The Biton is a hybrid designer dog created in the United States. Bred as a family companion from crossing a Bichon Frise with a Coton de Tulear, the Biton retains the small size and adorable fluffy or long and curly coat of its parents. (wagwalking.com)

• • •

Found this one pretty dull and dreary. It's built like a Saturday puzzle, with four thick, distinct, relatively isolated corners that you have to work your way through methodically, and that you can very very easily get stuck in if anything goes wrong. In short—not great flow. Further, when. you decided to basically make it a four-corner puzzle, you don't get interesting answers so much as acceptable answers. You're not gonna object to most of the longer fill, but you aren't going to be surprised or delighted by it much either. I don't understand what answers in this puzzle were supposed to be seed entries, i.e. the fill you really think is new and fresh and fun and interesting. You get a bunch of 9s, but since they're stacked, the best you can hope for is "clean," not "eye-popping." It's very tough to make stacked longer answers come out clean, so unless you seed one of those corners with a real winner and build on top of it, what you're most likely to get, best case scenario, is mostly what you get here—the corners hold up, and that's it. You get a "Q" here and and "X" there, but also a bunch of just-OK stuff like ART EDITOR and REDTIDES and IRON RULE and OUTRACED. Nothing wrong with those, just ... nothing memorable, either. PAPER WASP, which is freed from the limitations that come with long-answer stacking, is easily the most interesting thing in the grid, but even that is interesting only in the sense of being unusual (I didn't know such a thing existed) (32D: Insect with a delicate nest). It's a curiosity, not a surprising turn of phrase or a familiar expression or a famous name you've never seen in a grid or some as-yet ungridded modern phenomenon. PAPER WASP got a "huh, cool name" out of me ... which is good, but it's the most that any of the answers in this puzzle got out of me—at least in terms of positive mental commentary. This felt like a solid, workmanlike, 20th-century Saturday puzzle. Very competent, not a ton of fun.

I really don't get deciding that your most "original" bit of fill is going to be short fill, and today I am particularly looking at QUBIT (7D: Portmanteau unit of computing information). No idea what that is. Seems like a little smug nod to techy folks. I'm guessing it's pronounced like "cubit," and that it's a "portmanteau" of, uh, Q*BERT and OBIT. Oh, dang, it's actually "quantum" + "bit"—way less interesting. Anyway, let's just say that this answer has made its one appearance for this decade. See you in the '30s, QUBIT! Another thing I don't get is trying to disguise your weak fill (BITON) under the name of a "designer dog" (the very phrase makes me queasy) (50D: Dog that's a cross of two French-named breeds). It would be one thing if the two breeds involved in the name (portmanteau! again!) were well known, but I was sitting there going, "OK, it's a bichon frise and ... and ... huh ... I got nothing ... oh, crap, is DRUB right? Is it DRUM / MITON!?!? A Maltese and a ... python? What in the hell?" If you were familiar with the dog breed Coton de Tulear (the -TON part of this dog-engineering experiment), then congratulations. I just had to trust DRUB (49A: Defeat soundly) and pray that BITON was ... something. Not a great position to put the solver in. (And hey, if I'm the only solver that's out of the BITON fandom loop, then I take it all back and apologize for my ignorance)

Other bits:

• AREA MAP (40A: Part of a typical business search result on Google) — ugh. This answer pretty much embodies how scintillating I found this grid (not at all). I had SITEMAP and one point. So dreary to have the answer you need to get into one of the corners be this bland / vague. Thank god for GODSPEED down there (that answer looks positively electric compared to most of the rest of the grid)
• TOGAED (28D: Like ancient Roman senators) — one of those forced-adjectival answers that you just have to accept. I mean, am I currently SHIRTED (well, am I?) (I am). But I'm happy to allow a few of these Crossword Specials in the service of a wonderful grid. Just wish this grid had been more wonderful.
• EVA / DUARTE (38A: With 45-Down, pre-marriage name of a 1940s-'50s first lady) — first, congrats on using "pre-marriage" instead of the gendered, creepily virginity-focused "maiden"; second, wow, learning a lot about Bess Truman* today.
• MIR (34A: "Es tut ___ leid" ("I'm sorry," in German)) — unless it refers to a space station, your MIR clue is gonna be lost on me.
• MAGIC ACT (34D: Tricky thing to pull off?) — had the "G," but that was less help than you'd imagine. I first tried EGG-something (thinking that it was "tricky" in the "trick-or-treat" sense, and maybe kids were egging someone's house), and then I tried GAG-something (thinking of, I don't know, a joke, I guess, although those aren't technically "tricky," are they?)
• DOTE / TOTE — I just notice that these answers are symmetrical and they rhyme and for some reason I think this is cute. Get yourself a DOTE TOTE! Filled with all the books and candies and other items your beloved enjoys! This is the note I choose to end on. Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

*jk I know it's Eva Peron please no mail

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