Stream with a lot of shade? / FRI 9-26-25 / Antibiotic used to treat anthrax / It might be on display at ComicCon / Flock : geese :: business : ___ / Enemigo de un ratón / Repeated word in the Star Wars" prologue / Indigenous person of northern South America

Constructor: Larry Snyder

Relative difficulty: Medium (by old standards—by recent standards, more Medium-Challenging)

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: "Alea iacta EST" (24A: "Alea iacta ___" ("The die is cast")) —

Alea iacta est ("The die is cast") is a variation of a Latin phrase (iacta alea est [ˈjakta ˈaːlɛ.a ˈɛs̺t]) attributed by Suetonius to Julius Caesar on 10 January 49 BC, as he led his army across the Rubicon river in Northern Italy, between Cesena and Rimini, in defiance of the Roman Senate and beginning a long civil war against Pompey and the Optimates. The phrase is often used to indicate events that have passed a point of no return.

According to Plutarch, Caesar originally said the line in Greek rather than Latin, as ἀνερρίφθω κύβος anerrhī́phthō kýbos, literally "let a die be cast", metaphorically "let the game be played". This is a quote from a play by Menander, and Suetonius's Latin translation is slightly misleading, being merely a statement about the inevitability of what is to come, while the Greek original contains a self-encouragement to venture forward. The Latin version is now most commonly cited with the word order changed (Alea iacta est), and it is used both in this form, and in translation in many languages. The same event inspired another related idiom, "crossing the Rubicon". (wikipedia)

• • •

Struggled more than usual, but I feel like some of that struggle was caused by sleepiness. I mean, it should not have taken me as long as it did to get MEGHAN, for instance (42D: Duchess of Sussex beginning in 2018). I don't care about royals at all and generally zone out whenever they're mentioned, but still, she's pretty famous. The only name I could think of, though, was CAMILLA (sp?), so ... pfft. And then stuff like VERGE (55A: Border (on)) and SEE (48A: Call at the table?) ... seems like these should've come to me instantly, but they didn't, so ... I think it's just taking my brain longer than usual to come back online this morning. There did seem to be an awful lot of "?" and otherwise trick clues today. Ambiguous or deliberately misleading. Some of it worked—the clue on DELETED SCENES is really quite good (33A: Takes in the trash?). But then some of it worked ... less. Or felt more awkward, anyway. The clue on CREASED, for instance, or HATEWATCH. They're clever, in their way, but they are really ... trying. I feel like the clues themselves are going "Get it? get it? See, it's clever because ..." and I'm like "yeah, I see now ... relax." If something's CREASED, it's (arguably? maybe? if you use language in a weird way?) in need of "evening out" (49A: In need of an evening out?). The "an" before "evening" in the clue makes you think "evening" is a noun meaning "night." So I get the "joke." But I also wouldn't say "this crease needs evening out," ever ("ironing out," yes). So ... the "joke" landed oddly for me. 

[Stream with a lot of shade?] is a more elaborate "joke," but somehow more transparent. It does the same "trick" that the other two "?" clues I've mentioned do, i.e. make at least one word look like it's a different part of speech than what it is. "Takes" looks like it's a verb, but it's a noun. "Evening" looks like it's a noun, but it's really verbal. "Stream" looks like it's a noun, but it's a verb, and then "shade" ... well, that stays a noun, but it looks like it means one thing, but then means another ("shade" as slang for "disdain, criticism, hate"). I'm now realizing that every "?" clue today stopped me cold initially. Weirdly, there are also three clues that end in "?" that aren't "?" clues—they're just quotes that are interrogative, so it looks like there are more "?"s than there are. I should be paying attention to great fill, but I'm somehow in the weeds on "?" clues, which is possibly just my still-warming-up brain trying to even itself out, or else it's the puzzle being annoying, I can't tell. Maybe a little of both. The only thing I really hated in this puzzle, though, was INNER GEEK (3D: It might be on display at ComicCon). First, not a real phrase, shhh, no, stop. Second, if it's "on display," guess what, it's not "INNER." This whole "ooh, look at me, I'm a geek!" thing with ComicCon, you're not a "geek"! You're there to see some panel about the latest Marvel movie or whatever. Again, shhh. I have "HATE" written in the margin of my print-out. That was one of the last answers I got. Actually, the last answer I got was SWILL, a fitting cross for INNER GEEK.

The NW and SE were the toughest for me. Most of the ink on my puzzle print-out is concentrated in those areas. I don't buy most of the alleged collective nouns for animals. I see lists from time to time and think "no one calls them that, no one says that, just say 'group.'" This is what I felt about the FERRETS clue (22A: Flock : geese :: business : ___). As with royals, FERRETS are things I think about precisely never (unless forced), so "business"? If you say so. I have "F. off" written in the margin of my print-out next to FERRETS. I had 1A: Hogwash as TRIPE at first. Without the "W" from SWILL, WEASELED was impossible for me to see (2D: Talked one's way (out of)). The SE was slightly easier, but only because I got BANANA PEEL right away, off the "BA-." Otherwise, no apparent tennis context made HELD SERVE very hard, even after I had HELD (32D: Didn't get broken). Needed almost every cross, as I did for SPEED GUN (a term that never crosses my mind). A SPEED TRAP is a "problem" if you're going 90 (in a 55 zone), but the speeder would never think "hope there are no SPEED GUNs up ahead." CREASED is in that same corner, and I've already said how tough that was for me. So that's three longish answers where I needed almost every cross to get them, all in the same corner. Oh, and another "?" clue down there too (44D: The works? = OEUVRE). This might actually have been "Medium-Challenging" for me, at least compared to recent Fridays. Played more like a Saturday. I'll be surprised if tomorrow's puzzle tests me as much. This puzzle is really trying to be colloquial and current and slangy (BROHUG! EGOSURF! DEEP FAKES!), and I appreciate that. I just wasn't on its wavelength much of the time.

Bullets:

• 5D: One receiving monthly payments (LEASER) — I have "OOF" written next to this one. What an awful word. Isn't the term "LESSOR?" (It is). LEASER sounds like someone trying to say "Lisa." One of those awkward ugly legal terms like LIENEE.
• 10D: Enemigo de un ratón (GATO) — I don't speak Spanish, but I knew enough to get this immediately. Weird to say "enemy." Are we talking about a cartoon? My cat is not the "enemy" of birds, or squirrels, or chipmunks, or that weird bug in the corner, or falling leaves. He's just a vigilant hunter of small things that move. Nothing personal.

• 35D: Antibiotic used to treat anthrax (CIPRO) — I had to take CIPRO in the late '90s / early '00s for something or other. That's when I learned the term. Haven't thought of it since. Needed many crosses for it to come back to me. This is only the second NYTXW appearance ever for CIPRO. First was in 2019 (which is probably the last time I thought of CIPRO) (crossing my fingers that I don't get anthrax).
• 59A: Icelandic saga (EDDA) — I swear to you that I had that final "A" in place and wrote in ... SAGA. It was that kind of morning, I'm telling you.
• 47D: Made some Java, say (CODED) — the capital "J" is the giveaway here, obviously. Coffee "java" would've been lowercase (I assume).
• 22D: Repeated word in the Star Wars" prologue (FAR) — just started at the top: "A long time ago, in a galaxy FAR, FAR away..." The very best thing I've read about "Star Wars" of late (possibly ever) is this Isaac Chotiner interview of Cass Sunstein in the New Yorker a couple days ago—an absolute start-to-finish must-read. At first I thought "surely the 'Star Wars' they're talking about is the whole Reagan / SDI thing, not ... the movie franchise." But no. They're talking about the movie franchise. And Henry Kissinger. It's ... amazing. You almost feel bad for Sunstein. Almost. (Why anyone agrees to be interviewed by Isaac Chotiner, I will never understand.)

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Dance fad of the 1970s / TUE 3-18-25 / A wish might be made on a loose one / 1976 #1 novelty song by Rick Dees and His Cast of Idiots / Bourbon brand whose name originated from a hunting expedition / Tusked Ice Age mammal / Cardamom-spiced brew / Like someone with an "O.O.O." auto-reply set up, perhaps / Darth Vader's boyhood nickname / Like a person who might prefer platonic relationship, informally

Constructor: Larry Snyder and Jonathan Kaufman

Relative difficulty: Extremely Easy, even for a Tuesday

THEME: PARTY FOUL (65A: Knocking over someone's drink, e.g. ... or, homophonically, a hint to 17-, 27-, 39- and 54-Across) — familiar phrases that seem to describe "party"-ing birds (or "fowl"):

Theme answers:

• DISCO DUCK (17A: 1976 #1 novelty song by Rick Dees and His Cast of Idiots)
• SILLY GOOSE (27A: "You goofball!")
• FUNKY CHICKEN (39A: Dance fad of the 1970s)
• WILD TURKEY (54A: Bourbon brand whose name originated from a hunting expedition)

Word of the Day: FUNKY CHICKEN (39A) —

"Do the Funky Chicken" is a song written and recorded by American R&B singer and entertainer Rufus Thomas for Stax Records in 1969. The song was used as the title track of Thomas' 1970 LP, Do The Funky Chicken.

It became one of his biggest hits, reaching number 5 on the R&B chart in early 1970, number 28 on the US pop chart, and number 18 in Britain where it was his only chart hit. // The record was one of a series of novelty dance hits for Thomas. He improvised the song after performing with Willie Mitchell's band at the University of Tennessee, developing it further at a gig in Covington. Thomas said:

I did it in the middle of doing another song... and the words just started to come. I don't know how, they just came out of the blue. I just separated it. 'You raise your left arm up, and your right arm too.' When you're doing the funky chicken you use both arms. You don't just use one. It just happened I separated it. Then I put a little rhythm in between it. The same pattern that you heard on 'The Dog' is here on 'The Funky Chicken' but it is cut in half. That's how it came about.

Thomas added a spoken word section that he regularly used as a shtick as a radio DJ: "Oh I feel so unnecessary - this is the kind of stuff that makes you feel like you wanna do something nasty, like waste some chicken gravy on your white shirt right down front." The recording was produced by Al Bell and Tom Nixon, and the instrumental backing was by the Bar-Kays, featuring guitarist Michael Toles.

Reviewer Stewart Mason described the "Funky Chicken" as "the single goofiest dance craze of the 1970s... While Thomas clearly knows how silly the entire concept is – he starts the record off with his impersonation of a cackling hen – he doesn't let that stop him from getting behind those goofy lyrics and giving them everything he's got...." (wikipedia)

• • •

Slight case of Doja déjà vu this morning as I hit the revealer and got PARTY FOUL, the exact phrase used in a revealer clue just a few days ago. But instead of DOUBLE-DIPping, today's PARTY FOUL was actual partying fowl. Gotta say, I kinda like it, though man was it easy. Easier (and tighter, thematically) than the Monday puzzle yesterday. If your time wasn't the fastest you've ever seen, keep in mind that the puzzle is oversized (16 wide) so that may have something to do with it. Gotta have an even number of squares across so that FUNKY CHICKEN (12) can sit dead center. The themer set is fun and admirably coherent, and the revealer really did a nice job of tying it all together. Yesterday's revealer didn't really capture what was going on with the theme answers, but today's—right on the money, and with a "foul/fowl" pun to boot. The puzzle was way, way too easy, but at least the grid was clean. No groaning wincing or eye-rolling on my way from top to bottom. No real complaints about this one. I just wonder if maybe this played (much) easier for older (Gen X and up) solvers than for younger. Not one but two 1970s bird-based novelty songs!? That's ... well, all of them, probably (Morris Day and the Time did "The Bird," but that was in the '80s). Seems entirely plausible that people 40 and younger might never even have heard of DISCO DUCK or the FUNKY CHICKEN. If you're in that category, I hope you at least had fun learning that such greatness once existed.

Nothing flashy outside the theme answers, but as I say, the grid holds up very nicely. And though there aren't a lot of longer answers, FULL OF IT (39D: Talking sheer nonsense) and MASTODON (12D: Tusked Ice Age mammal) are both quite strong. The constructors wisely load up on cheater squares* in the NE and SW corner to take pressure off of what would otherwise be very open segments—lots of white space, very hard to fill cleanly. Today, your themer is the star—you don't want solvers getting bogged down in muck or distracted by awkwardness in the corners if it's not necessary, so put little black-square corner tabs in there and let the fill breeeeathe. The result is clean and even colorful answers, as well as a cool-looking grid with good flow. The puzzle felt slight, but I think the construction here is solid.

Bullets:

• 28D: A wish might be made on a loose one (LASH) — hardest answer of the puzzle for me. I couldn't get the image of a wishbone out of my head. Also, with no "EYE" in front of LASH, it was harder to see. Lastly, I've never known anyone who had this particular wish superstition. I've just seen it on TV and in movies.
• 59A: Like a person who might prefer platonic relationship, informally (ARO) — as in "aromantic." ARO was old-school crosswordese (clued primarily as [Orinoco tributary] or [Nigerian native]) until Shortz pretty much snuffed it out. Then it made a single appearance in 2012 as a character from Twilight ([Michael Sheen's character in "Twilight" (2015)]) before the sexual identity abbr. came along and took over ARO duties in 2022 (eight appearances to date).
• 54A: Bourbon brand whose name originated from a hunting trip (WILD TURKEY) — I was going so fast that I got complacent / cocky and just filled in the pre-TURKEY part of this answer with COLD. Sort of surprised that my brain defaulted to COLD and not JIVE (which would've been a great fit for this theme).

• 38A: Amount printed in red (LOSS) — had the "L," wrote in LIEN (?). This answer crossed 20D: Title pages? (DEEDS), which I also had a little trouble with. I also had issues with CFO (wrote in CEO) (62A: One managing a Fortune 500 company's fortunes, for short). So, besides trouble with LASH and trouble with COLD JIVE WILD TURKEY, all of my trouble was with short financial stuff. And all that trouble totaled up didn't amount to much trouble. The puzzle was still a flat-out sprint.

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*"cheater squares" are black squares that do not increase word count, usually added to make the grid easier to fill  

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Home of the prehistoric Ggantija temples / FRI 2-23-24 / Early number? / Windy location of myth? / Queer identity whose flag is green, white, gray and black, for short / Defunct health technology company that once had a $10 billion valuation / Longtime TV news colleague of Pelley, Cooper and Whitaker / Prestigious award established after its founder purportedly read his premature obituary

Constructor: Larry Snyder

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: ARO (23A: Queer identity whose flag is green, white, gray and black, for short) —

Aromanticism is a romantic orientation characterized by experiencing little to no romantic attraction. The term "aromantic", colloquially shortened to "aro", refers to a person whose romantic orientation is aromanticism. // Aromanticism is defined as "having little or no romantic feeling towards others: experiencing little or no romantic desire or attraction". The term aromantic was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2018. [...] In the initialism LGBTQIA+, the A stands for aromanticism, alongside asexuality and agender. (wikipedia)

• • •

This one really didn't seem to have that much to offer. Everything seems to be slightly ... "out-of-date" and "bygone" aren't right, but ... past its prime? I mean, THERANOS? (11D: Defunct health technology company that once had a $10 billion valuation). Why would I want to think about that now? I tried hard not to pay any attention to that story *then*. There was a pretty lady .... fraud ... something something? I didn't and don't care. HAUTE CUISINE is a cool answer, but it also feels like a phrase I haven't heard since the '80s (actually, I may be thinking of "nouvelle cuisine" ... yeah, I'm definitely thinking of "nouvelle cuisine," nevermind) (27A: It has high-end tastes). Do kids still play "truth or dare" at SLUMBER PARTYs? (21D: Occasion when one might choose truth). I hope so, that's adorable. Feels quaint, somehow. UTTER ROT? Quaint. "YES, MA'AM"? Quaint. RASSLER? I don't know what in tarnation that is. Maybe it's quaint. "ARE YOU DECENT?" also has a certain quaintness to it. I guess you might ask that semi-ironically today ... or was it always semi-ironic? Who ever thought being in a state of undress In One's Own Bedroom "indecent"? Speaking of "ONE'S" ... ugh, I thought we'd banished the long ONE'S answers from the Themeless Universe. They used to lumber across the grids like dinosaurs, the ONE'S answers. Their leader was A LOT ON ONE'S PLATE (*seven* times in just *four* years, perpetrated by just *three* constructors, what the hell??) (R.I.P., A LOT ON ONE'S PLATE, 2007-2011). Anyway, every appearance of ONE'S makes me wince inside. Sorry, ATE ONE'S WORDS (36A: Had to recant). There are some decent (!) answers floating about. TATTED UP isn't bad (and a nice trap—I wrote in TATTOOED at first) (52A: Covered in ink). PIPE ORGAN and LABYRINTH are solid. But the marquee answers here just don't seem strong enough to carry a Friday puzzle. 

There were a lot of quaint (old) cluing tricks in the puzzle today. Using "windy" to mean "winding" instead of "blustery" (I think we saw this "trick" very recently, actually) (10D: Windy location of myth? = LABYRINTH). Then there's the use of "number" to mean not a mathematical figure but something that numbs you (2D: Early number? = ETHER). Then there's the TILDE trick, which is a variation on the "letteral" clue (the kind of self-referential clue that is trying to point you to a letter, i.e. [Figure head?] for EFF or [America first?] for CAPITAL A—wow, that clue is cursed, I don't know what came over me, never use that clue, please, thank you). Today, we get [Baño feature], which is not a feature of a Spanish bathroom, but a feature of the word "baño"—specifically the TILDE. Again, an old trick.

I was recently editing a puzzle and wondering to myself, "Is ARO a widely known abbreviation?" Well, it is now. Don't say you haven't seen it. It's been in the NYTXW twice before with this clue (i.e. as an abbr. for "aromantic")  (2022, 2023).  Before 2022, the only time it had been seen in the NYTXW in *thirty years* was once during the Great Twilight Plague of the 2010s ([Michael Sheen's character in "Twilight"] (!?!?!)). In the Maleska Era, you'd apparently see ARO not infrequently, but clued as stuff like [Orinoco tributary] or [Nigerian native] (seriously, those were the only two clues he used, and he used them a lot: twenty times in total!). If you want to know what Maleska was like as an editor, *that* is what Maleska was like as an editor. Obscure three-letter geographical place names—paradigmatic Maleskanism! Happy to be present for the ARO-naissance. Not so happy to be present for the SRO-naissance, but then SRO never really went anywhere, did it?

Didn't know ITT but inferred ITT from the clue (Wednesday ... Addams Family ... ITT) (50D: Ignatius ___, figure on Netflix's "Wednesday"). Had ARE YOU ASLEEP? before ARE YOU DECENT? and EMMY NOM before EMMY NOD (30A: One of more than 300 for "S.N.L."). Actually, if I'm being honest, I tried to make EMCEES work before either of those answers. EMCEEES!!! (obviously I had the "EM-" in place first). Left the "T" blank during my first pass at MODEL T'S since I don't know my early car models that well and thought it might be MODEL A'S (7D: Tin lizzies). I should add that one to the "quaint" list, above. Oh, and I had RAT before RAG (26A: Unreliable news source). The DECENT / ASLEEP slip-up was probably the biggest obstacle today, but it wasn't that big. I threw down ASLEEP, then immediately tried to cross that with 45A: Singer Marie, but the only [Singer Marie] I could think of (in five letters) was TEENA Marie, so it didn't take me long to pull ASLEEP and (tentatively) write in TEENA. Problem solved. So this one was breezy, but just not as sparkly as I'd like my themeless grids to be.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

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