Shifty little sucker? / SAT 12-21-24 / Austrian composer Mahler / X follower, perhaps / Black-and-white divers / Pen for a hit / Bed hogs, at times / Woodpecker fare / Jhené ___, Grammy-nominated R&B singer / Character who says "I am short, fat and proud of that" / Last ruler of the Ptolemaic Kingdom, familiarly / Star-forming region nearest to Earth / Noisy Asian bird / Short palindrome in the middle of a famous longer one

Constructor: Barbara Lin and Lewis Rothlein

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (Challenging for me, but I made some ridiculous, sleepy decisions)

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: SALT Treaty (23D: SALT, but not PEPPER = NUCLEAR PACT) —

The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) were two rounds of bilateral conferences and corresponding international treaties involving the United States and the Soviet Union. The Cold War superpowers dealt with arms control in two rounds of talks and agreements: SALT I and SALT II.

Negotiations commenced in Helsinki, in November 1969. SALT I led to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and an interim agreement between the two countries.

Although SALT II resulted in an agreement in 1979 in Vienna, the US Senate chose not to ratify the treaty in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which took place later that year. The Supreme Soviet did not ratify it either. The agreement expired on December 31, 1985, and was not renewed, although both sides continued to respect it.

The talks led to the STARTs, or Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties, which consisted of START I, a 1991 completed agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union, and START II, a 1993 agreement between the United States and Russia which never entered into effect, both of which proposed limits on multiple-warhead capacities and other restrictions on each side's number of nuclear weapons. A successor to START I, New START, was proposed and was eventually ratified in February 2011. (wikipedia)

• • •

I'm out of practice. The puzzles have run so easy of late that I don't have much recent experience of struggling with a hard one, and today's, yeesh, just couldn't get a grip. From start to (especially) finish. In retrospect, I see all kinds of ways that I *should" have been able to navigate through the grid more easily. If, for instance, I'd looked at all the long Across clues in the NW instead of resolutely focusing on the short Downs, I'd've seen 17A: The "King of Mambo" (TITO PUENTE), which would've been a gimme for me. I probably could've gotten OPERA HOUSE too if I'd just looked at the damn clue, sigh (15A: Madrid's Teatro Real, for one). No idea why the only long Across I even looked at up there (before abandoning it) was 1A: Shifty little sucker? Weird. I solve just after waking, around 4am, and I think my brain just wasn't warm enough for this one. You can see how long it took me to get traction, here:

And as you can see, there are errors. CAV for NET (the NETs were in the finals? Twice?), ANNA for ALMA (???). You can see I just don't know the Names in this puzzle. My response to the clue about The Hate U Give was "I thought that was written by a woman" (40A: "The Hate U Give" author Thomas). LOL, pfft. Yes, dummy, it was. "Thomas" is the last name. The AIKO singer, absolutely no clue (26D: Jhené ___, Grammy-nominated R&B singer). A LOGAN that's not an airport? No clue. But I did know TITO PUENTE and Rooney MARA and REBA, of course, so not all names were poison. Still, those names I didn't know were real barriers. The hardest part for me was the end, the SE, where I had BON- and ITC- and a very tentative DEEP-SEATED (I always wonder if it's actually DEEP-SEEDED), and then .... nothing. Couldn't think of much of anything starting BON-. Wanted IT COULDN'T HURT, but that wouldn't fit, and somehow my brain never entertained the shorter CAN'T. Doesn't sound natural in my mouth, though it makes perfect sense. So Acrosses were a no-go. And coming at that section from above ... nope, couldn't do that either. I thought the vineyard eponym was gonna be a wine producer, I couldn't fathom what [Form letters?] was, I was expecting something much less straightforward at 48D: Blue laws, e.g., so I was very stuck. Even the "famous" palindrome threw me, as I thought "Madam, I'm Adam" might be part of a longer biblical palindrome (???) and so wrote in EVE instead of ERE (from "Able was I ERE I saw Elba"). I still don't really get how ETD is a "Track stat."  Oh, train track. Yikes. Anyway, I had to run the alphabet for the first letter of [Woodpecker fare] (three letters ending "P") ... and when I got to "S" I saw SAP, and that made me see BONSAI TREE (51A: It's a little shady), and that was all I needed. Grueling for me. 

The grid looks fine. The only time I was actually enjoying myself was somewhere in the middle, when I got RUN INTERFERENCE and LOWER FORTY-EIGHT (a lovely center cross) (34A: Alabama is in it, but Alaska is not). The corners are very solid, and I especially like BLOW A GASKET. Didn't love the cutesy clue on BENDY STRAW, as I don't think "shifty" is a word anyone would ever apply to a straw, and I don't think of straws as "little," either (compared to what?). Still, BENDY STRAW is a fine answer. There's really no longer answer that feels forced or awkward, or even particularly dull or lifeless, and that's a pretty good accomplishment.

Help!:

• 1D: X follower, perhaps (BOT) — of all the things "X" can be, one of those things is a decaying social media site where, famously, many users are actually BOTs. This clue took me a while to understand, even after I got it, so if you didn't get it right away, you're in good company. Well, you're in my company, at any rate.
• 19A: No longer waffle (OPT) — even something as simple as this was actually tough in its ambiguity. I ended up in an unexpected kealoa* situation—ACT worked just as well. Better, I thought. "ACT now!" "It's time to ACT!" Replace either of those with OPT and you sound absurd. 
• 28A: Lines in bars (URLS) — after the "X" ambiguity and the OPT/ACT ambiguity, we get even more ambiguity here. What kind of "bars?" What kind of "lines?" Who can say. I had UPCS in here for a bit.

• 23A: À la king? (NOBLY) — more ambiguity. I was trying to decide between REGAL and ROYAL. The phrase "À la king" is used adjectivally on menus ... it's technically a prepositional phrase. Did not see adverb coming. Also didn't see generic "noble" coming with specific "king" in clue. 
• 38A: Stake (FUND) — grimace-y face, I am making one. Is this a noun or verb situation? I guess this is def. 3c of "Stake" ("an interest or share in an undertaking or enterprise"), but I'm not certain who these two words swap out for one another.
• 47A: "And the ___ raths outgrabe" ("Jabberwocky" line) (MOME) — words can't express how much I resent having to know the non-words from this damn poem. After "slithy TOVES," I got nothing. There's gotta be a way to get MOME out of this grid.
• 58A: What some people display after getting stuck? (TATS) — an awkward, ungainly clue, the awkwardness and ungainliness undermining its intended humor. I had T-TS here and ... yeah ... I thought exactly what you're thinking ... I was like "wow, I guess that's one way to get help." 
• 5D: Like a noisy toy (YAPPY) — only just now realizing the "toy" is a type of dog and not an actual child's plaything. Brutal clue (I think I wanted AROAR at one point (???)).
• 10D: Bed hogs, at times (WEEDS) — more brutality. Very Saturday, this one.
• 27D: Japanese food that's a good source of what it spells backward (NORI) — one of my few successes today. Got this with no crosses, and got it early on, so it really helped.
• 35A: Pen for a hit (E-CIG) — I couldn't make any grammatical sense of this clue. So it's a vape "pen" that you take a "hit" from? The world of vaping is terra incognita to me. I smoked actual cigarettes for two years in my youth and then stopped and that is not entirely but pretty much my entire experience of smoking.

That's it for the puzzle. More Holiday Pet Pics now!

Here's Mickey, who agrees that the Chiefs are looking pretty good again this year, but would rather you put the ornament on the tree ... please. 

[Thanks, Jack]

Little Kiddle says "there's nothing 'Holiday' about this picture, you're not really going to sen- ... oh, you are? Huh, OK." You'r'e very pretty, LK. Maybe next year you'll get a little red bow or something. 

[Thanks, Lesley]

Penny here could kinda pass for a flying reindeer, so ... sure, it's a 'Holiday' pic, whatever

[Thanks, Anne]

Snowflake has been into the catnip and is having a holiday visionary experience. "The angels are all around us, man ... can't you see them ... glowing in their multitudes ..." Sure, Snowflake. We all see them. You just get some rest.

[Thanks, Amy]

Foxglove would prefer not to

Foxglove's canine sister Maggie, however, embraces the season wholeheartedly. Here she is engaging in her favorite winter sport: snoozing on a blanket (RIP, sweet burrito) 

[Thanks, Anthony]

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

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Insulating sleeve for a beverage / SUN 4-30-23 / 2020 film starring a cartoon dog / One of cinq in Tartuffe / Curved edges formed by intersecting vaults in architecture / 5 6 or 7 in golf / Bit of vocal fanfare / Pain reliever with oxymoronic name / Title woman who has children at her feet in a 1968 hit / It means waterless place in Mongolian / 2004 Don Cheadle film set in Africa / Popular singer who has recorded in Elvish

Constructor: Lewis Rothlein and Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: "Name Dropping" — In order to make sense of six Downs at the bottom of the grid, you have to "drop" the "names" that have been embedded in an answers directly above them:

Theme answers:

• "LADY MADONNA" (90D: Title woman who has children at her feet, in a 1968 hit) ("DONNA" drops down from 28D: Cautious (of) (CHAR(DONNA)Y))
• TAKE THE L (110D: Accept defeat, in modern slang) ("ETHEL" drops down from 42D: Longtime anchor of "NBC Nightly News" (BROK(ETHEL)AW))
• FLY FISHERMAN (91D: Person dealing with casting and lines)  ("HERMAN" drops down from (S(HERMAN)TANK))
• "HOTEL RWANDA" (92D: 2004 Don Cheadle film set in Africa) ("WANDA" drops down from 19D: Check out, as a book (BO(WANDA)RROW))
• KUBRICK (115D: Director of "The Shining" and "Dr. Strangelove") ("RICK" drops down from 44D: Guarding, as a goal (T(RICK)ENDING))
• ELIZABETHAN (94D: Like England in the late 16th century) ("ETHAN" drops down from 34D: Informants, informally (FIN(ETHAN)KS))

Word of the Day: DIABOLO (118A: String-and-spool toy) —

The diabolo (/diːˈæbəloʊ/ dee-AB-ə-loh; commonly misspelled diablo) is a juggling or circus prop consisting of an axle (British English: bobbin) and two cups (hourglass/egg timer shaped) or discs derived from the Chinese yo-yo. This object is spun using a string attached to two hand sticks ("batons" or "wands"). A large variety of tricks are possible with the diabolo, including tosses, and various types of interaction with the sticks, string, and various parts of the user's body. Multiple diabolos can be spun on a single string.

Like the Western yo-yo (which has an independent origin), it maintains its spinning motion through a rotating effect based on conservation of angular momentum. (wikipedia)

• • •

Well at least this one is trying. I mean, it's definitely more enjoyable than most Sundays I've done of late. I assume that if you solve on the app, there's some cutesy animation at the end where the "names" "drop" down from above and settle into their "proper" place at the bottom of the grid. But with static answers, the puzzle's title makes no sense. I guess the title is saying that *I*, the solver, have to mentally "drop" the names in order to make sense of the Down answers along the bottom. But the names are represented in the grid as if they have risen. Not dropped. Name Rising. That is what the puzzle should've been called. If you'd done this very same theme but put the partial themers at the *top* of the grid instead of the bottom, then bam, there you are, the names drop ... "Name Dropping." As is, the title feels inapt. Unapt? I can never tell the difference. Wrong. That's what the title feels like. [UPDATE: I slept on this and mostly changed my mind, especially since there’s the double meaning of “drop” here (“take out” and “put lower”)—it’s fine that *I’m* doing the dropping.]  But the basic concept is pretty slick, I think ... not a huge fan of gibberish in the grid (i.e. LADY MA, TAK, HOTELR, etc.), but since the missing letters are actually clearly represented elsewhere in the grid, I don't mind the gibberish that much. There are unclued answers here—a bunch of them. All the name-containing answers, totally unclued (that is, for example, CHARY is clued but CHARDONNAY is not). But every one of those answers a. makes a real word or phrase and b. can be filled in via the missing "name" supplied by those truncated themers at the bottom, so despite the non-cluing, the puzzle remains quite fair. I will say that of all the theme-related stuff, TRICK ENDING feels like the worst. The shakiest by far in terms of its relative "real thing"-ness. When I google ["trick ending"] all I get are crossword sites, and while it's true that google knows who I am and is probably apt to push me toward crossword sites, I google stuff in quotation marks all the time and it never just lines up an array like this:

I guess they mean a "surprise" or "twist" ending? Something "gotcha" that suggests you've been thinking about things wrong all along? The phrase just doesn't land right to my ear. No EARGASM at all. Speaking of ... if I don't see TAKE THE L or EARGASM again for a few years, that would be just fine. Feel like we've worn those babies out in the past few months. Like, one EARGASM a year and I'm good, frankly. But back to the theme: I don't know that it does what it says it does, but what it does is at least clever and structurally ... interesting. As I say, I've had much worse times with Sundays of late. So yeah, sure, I'll take this.

The fill did make me wince in places, though. HEROIZE ... why does that "word" hurt my brain so much? It's awful. I am happy for you to LIONIZE someone, but HEROIZE sounds like the kind of thing that someone with a limited vocabulary just made up and then everybody ran with it? Strangely, I have no problem with the word "villainize." "Villanize?" How the hell do you spell that? My software is red-underlining both my attempts. I guess it thinks I mean "vilify" but I don't. Hmm. Anyway, HEROIZE sounds like something you do to sandwich meat. The "O" into "-IZE" is particularly awkward and unmellifluous. It's like "ghettoize," a somewhat more real term that I also can't stand the sound of. I also balked hard at FLORAE. Multiple ... FLORAE. FLORA already applies to a totality of plant life in a given area. And the way FLORAE is clued here, as "specimens" ... not seeing that definition. FLORA belongs to a region—"specimen" implies a singular example. Hard to believe there weren't other less awkward options there. LOL this is a Shortz-era *debut*—that should tell you how iffy it is. Hasn't appeared in the NYTXW since the mid-'80s. Here's to another 40 years in the vault! And please take GROINS with you! (Looks like GROINS made it into the Shortz era, possibly via an already-accepted Maleska-era puzzle, during Shortz's first full year of editing, in 1994, but hadn't been heard from since ... until today.)

DIABOLO was a huge ??? I feel like maybe I saw some tie dye-wearing, patchouli-smelling, jam band-listening dudes playing with one of these on the quad in the '90s, once, maybe? The same kind of dudes who are still having HEAD TRIPS decades after the '60s ended. Not sure. Not really up on the extended yo-yo family of toys.  SIN BINS sounds too precious for so rough a sport, but looks like it's legit, and across a number of sports, actually (including rugby and roller derby). The golf clue was ??? to me too, in that I understand the concept of numbered irons, but did not know MIDIRON was an actual category (generally, the higher the number, the more loft / less distance). Only thing I truly didn't know in the grid besides DIABOLO was Marian ANDERSON (84A: Singer Marian, the first African American to perform at the Met). Overall, pretty easy without being dull. Answers like KOOZIE and "I JUST ATE" and FRACAS and NO JOKE kept things bouncy and relatively interesting throughout.

Bullets:

• "SCOOB" (18A: 2020 film starring a cartoon dog) — people tell me movies came out in 2020 and I have no choice but to believe them but there's a real tree falling / woods / sound thing going on with early COVID-era cinema. If you can call "SCOOB" "cinema." Which I invite you to do.
• RIMS (37A: Pair of glasses?) — in that ... glasses have RIMS. A pair of them? It's awful, yes, I know, not sure why anyone thought this was cute.
• SATIRE (49A: Cutting part of The Onion?) — The Onion is *entirely* SATIRE, so again, I have no idea whose idea of "humor" this "?" clue was. The phrase is clunky and evokes nothing except ... partially cutting onions? Big miss. 
• SNOW (45A: Angels can be found in it) — No. They "might" be found in it, in that one "might" make a SNOW angel, but "can" implies a much greater degree of certainty about angels' presence. Like, I could search SNOW forevvvvvvvvver and find no angels. The fact that the angel "might" be there doesn't mean I "can" find it. Boo. Choose the right word. Choose "might."
• DO IT (32D: Two-thirds of 105-Across — Deeply awful. Cynical, even. It's bad fill to begin with, but it also dupes part of something already in the grid (DIY), so instead of trying harder for better fill, you just ... point to the fact that you couldn't bother?
• SDSU (24A: Southern California sch.) — San Diego State University. They recently made it to the finals of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament, where they were routed by UConn.

It's the last day of April—time to highlight the best NYTXW puzzles I've solved this month (two themed puzzles, and one themeless). So here it is, the Best of April 2023:

• Themed: Robin Yu, "TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE" (Thu., Apr. 13); Katherine Baicker and Scott Earl, "THERE ARE NO WORDS" (Mon., Apr. 17) 
• Themeless: Kameron Austin Collins (UFOLOGISTS / "MEANING WHAT?" / "DO YOU MIND?" / LAURA DERN) (Sat., Apr. 15)

Themeless competition was particularly tough this month. Both themelesses from this weekend (Handa/Agard, Steinberg) were exceedingly worthy. But I had to give the edge to KAC's magisterial grid. Take care, see you later. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Old music halls / THU 10-13-22 / Extended feature of "Hey Jude" and "Layla" / Congress-created media giant / Churchill portrayer in 2017's Darkest Hour / Mankind biblically / Jamaican sprinter Thompson-Herah / Fruit liqueur from Italy / Evidence provider for some citations

Constructor: Lewis Rothlein

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: SKIP TOWN (62A: Run off ... or how to make the answers to 17-, 21-, 34-, 44- and 53-Across fit their clues) — "skip" the name of a "town" (from the state in parentheses at the end of each theme clue) to find a regular word, which is the answer to the clue. The actual answer you see in the grid? Completely unclued:

Theme answers:

• REBUTTED (17A: Sunset shade? (MT)) = RED
• BLARED OUT (21A: Start of an objection? (TX)) = BUT
• CHEERIEST (34A: Booty spot? (PA)) = CHEST
• HOME SALES (44A: They're the pits (AZ)) = HOLES
• PROVOLONE (53A: Sole (UT)) = LONE

Word of the Day: ELAINE Thompson-Herah (64A: Jamaican sprinter Thompson-Herah with five Olympic golds) —

 

Elaine Sandra-Lee Thompson-Herah OD (née Thompson; born June 28, 1992) is a Jamaican sprinter who competes in the 60 metres, 100 metresand 200 metres. Regarded as one of the greatest sprinters of all time, she is a five-time Olympic champion, the fastest woman alive over the 100 m, and the third-fastest ever over 200 m. 

Thompson-Herah is the first female sprinter in history, and the second sprinter after Usain Bolt, to win the "sprint double" at consecutive Olympics, capturing 100 m and 200 m gold at the 2016 Rio Olympics and again at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. A six-time Olympic medallist, she rose to prominence at the 2015 World Athletics Championships, winning a silver in the 200 m. At the Rio Olympics, she became the first woman since Florence Griffith-Joynerin 1988 to win 100 m and 200 m gold at the Olympics. (wikipedia)

• • •

Much as I hate saying this (and I do), this was not enjoyable to me at all. The theme didn't seem to be playing fair, and the "reveal" was completely deflating. The worst part of all, from a puzzle-enjoyment standpoint, was that the answers in the grid are not clued. There is literally nothing pointing to them at the level of meaning or sense. This is an *especially* galling problem when getting those answers is so hard. I've seen unclued puzzle elements before, but usually they aren't your endpoint. They aren't your goal. They're incidental, or you get them relatively easily but don't quite know why? But here ... a lot of work for an answer with no apparent relationship to anything. You have to put the themers together from a formula ... for no reason. You just do. There is no thematic coherence to the set. What does REBUTTED have to do with BLARED OUT (an awkward phrase to begin with)? Nothing. At the level of meaning: nothing. None of the answers have anything to do with each other (at the definitional level) and none of the answers are even clued (at the definitional level). So you have this incredibly arduous task of having to figure out what the formula is for making the clues make any sense, and then you have to make a plausible (again, unclued) answer from that formula. When I say that the puzzle wasn't playing fair, I mean not just that the answers are unclued, but that they are unrelated to one another. I was really, really expecting the non-town elements of the theme answers to have *something* to do with each other. I somehow got REBUTTED (slowly, completely from crosses—had REBUTTAL in there at one point), and then thought "oh, ok, colors are involved" (because "BUTTE" appeared inside "RED"), and then ... well, the next themer started "BL-" so obviously that was going to have something to do with "BLUE," right? Ugh, wrong. With CHEERIEST I realized that the container words, i.e. the literal clue answers (RED, BUT, CHEST, etc.), unlike the "towns," were *also* not going to have anything to do with each other. It's just arbitrariness after arbitrariness, and for an extremely anticlimactic payoff. Anticlimactic at the level of the individual answer ("the answer to the clue .. is just ... BUT?"), and anticlimactic at the revealer (SKIP doesn't even accurately describe what's happening in every case—see below).

Add to all this the fact all the clues in the puzzle feel like they were turned way up, difficulty-wise. It was such a slog. I actually came to a dead stop with the entire SW mostly empty, wondering how in the world I was going to get in. I had DONNE and RELO written in there and that's about it. Couldn't get: SUITE, NPR (clue made it seem like something I'd never heard of) (46A: Congress-created media giant), TRAVAIL, RECIPROCAL, RADAR, MALTED (ugh), RECANT, ELAINE (just didn't know her), POLLED. But ... and maybe you can see where this is going ... the real issue in this section: PROVOLONE. Why? Because "SKIP" implies "jump over," i.e. start on one side and then continue on the other. But this answer Does Not Do That. The "answer," LONE (53A: Sole), "skips" precisely *nothing*. You don't even deal with PROVO. It just sits off to the side, and then LONE comes after. That is not "skipping." And the letter combinations in that word meant that even though I knew PROVO was the "town" involved, I tried to put PROVO in using the "O"s from DONNE and HERO (i.e. the 2nd and 3rd "O"s) instead of those in RECIPROCAL and DONNE. And then of course couldn't make any answer fit. And since, as we've established, the full answers are Completely Unclued ... ugh. The only joy I got from this puzzle was writing in YEA HIGH, which is a fun thing to say (39A: "... about up to here"). The rest: a deliberately obtuse* chore. I just don't understand where the fun is on this one. 

Had a few wrong answers, like SOLO for CODA (1A: Extended feature of "Hey Jude" and "Layla"), and ODE for OED (15A: Meaningful work, for short?). But mainly I just couldn't get things. I knew people got their GEDS, but I didn't know they had "scores," and boy does that look weird in the plural (40D: Their scores are on some coll. applications). Speaking of abbreviations, it felt like an onslaught at times. NBA OED BEEB ADDL is just the densest example. There's other clusters too, like NCIS IFC. And NSFW WDS IDS. And it's not like there's a lot of lovely fill to make up for it. I had this theme that was slow and unpleasant to solve, and then this grid that was both full of less-than-sparkling fill *and* clued hard. It just wasn't my day. Ooh, sorry: LIMONCELLO. I do like that (both as fill and as beverage). Ultimately, it just felt like there was no consideration given to what it would feel like to solve this thing. If you're gonna put me through the wringer, at least give me a prize for my perseverance. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

*apparently I meant "abstruse," not "obtuse." Thanks to the commenter for the correction :)

P.S. worth noting / confessing that I once published a puzzle with unclued theme answers, and that PROVOLONE was actually one of those answers (!?). My themers were more in the "real things clued wackily" vein, so the sense of the answer was literally there in the clue. Anyway, it's highly possible that many solvers failed to enjoy my puzzle, the way I failed to enjoy this one. It happens.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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1965 Shirley Ellis hit full of wordplay / THU 1-27-22 / German physicist after whom a unit of magnetism is named / Republican politico Michael / Garden produce named for an Italian city / Rodomontade / Foofaraw / What two sets of dots within double lines indicate in musical scores / Setting for 2009 film Precious / London district named for its botanic garden

Constructor: Lewis Rothlein and Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Medium to Medium-Challenging

THEME: REPEAT (47D: What two sets of dots within double lines indicate, in musical scores) — the clue somehow declines to add the ". . . or a hint to what's happening in [all the themers]," but that's what's going on: those answers have the musical notation in them, and you just REPEAT the letters in those sections to get the correct phrase:

Theme answers: 

• NOWWH:EREW:E (17A: Question after a digression)
• :GEOR:WELL (30A: Who wrote "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past")
• NOM:ANIS:LAND (35A: Classic John Donne line)
• R:OMAT:OES (41A: Garden produce named for an Italian city)
• R:IDES:ADDLE (57A: Go on horseback à la Lady Godiva)

Word of the Day: GAUSS (5A: German physicist after whom a unit of magnetism is named) —

Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss (/ɡaʊs/; German: Gauß [kaʁl ˈfʁiːdʁɪç ˈɡaʊs]; Latin: Carolus Fridericus Gauss; 30 April 1777 – 23 February 1855) was a German mathematician and physicist who made significant contributions to many fields in mathematics and science. Sometimes referred to as the Princeps mathematicorum^[ (Latin for '"the foremost of mathematicians"') and "the greatest mathematician since antiquity", Gauss had an exceptional influence in many fields of mathematics and science, and is ranked among history's most influential mathematicians. // The gauss, symbol G (sometimes Gs), is a unit of measurement of magnetic induction, also known as magnetic flux density. The unit is part of the Gaussian system of units, which inherited it from the older CGS-EMUsystem. It was named after the German mathematician and physicist Carl Friedrich Gauss in 1936. One gauss is defined as one maxwell per square centimetre. // As the cgs system has been superseded by the International System of Units (SI), the use of the gauss has been deprecated by the standards bodies, but is still regularly used in various subfields of science. The SI unit for magnetic flux density is the tesla (symbol T), which corresponds to 10,000gauss. (wikipedia)

• • •

Well, I had to solve this on the app because of its "special feature," which turned out just to be two dots and two lines (I couldn't even really see the lines), so I had to put up with the grid telling me "you're halfway done!" and then the stupid music at the end ... but if we strip away that those annoying experiential frills, and just focus on the puzzle per se, then it's not nearly so annoying. It's also not that exciting. It's just phrases with four repeated letters, and the answer kind of doubles back on itself. Not a hard concept to grasp, and if you've had any music education then you probably got the concept before you even hit the revealer. The problem is that once you get it ... it's not like it's particularly fun to get. Maybe it makes the puzzle a little easier. It definitely made the theme answers easy to get, now that I think of it. I had a bit of trouble at first sorting out "NOW WH:EREW:E...," mostly because it looks like an *incomplete* phrase, not a doubled-back phrase (I thought maybe the answer veered off in some direction or other, but if I followed STEREO Down, that only took me to "NOW WHERE WERE O ..." so after that dead end, I remembered the musical meaning of the dots and saw what the answer was doing. A couple of times I still had trouble parsing the answers. I wrote in SIDESADDLE for the Lady Godiva one and then wondered how [Something well-placed?] could end in -SIG (it's -RIG because it's R:IDE:SADDLE, i.e. "ride sidesaddle"). The whole thing felt a little INERT to me, and the revealer was a giant let-down (just ... the word ... indicating ... what was obviously going on). But the puzzle sets out to do a thing and it does that thing, so there you go.

There were a bunch of (unintentionally?) paired answers that messed with my brainwaves. Having had KEW Gardens early in the puzzle meant that when I saw the word "Garden" at the beginning of the R:OMAT:OES clue, I kept seeing it as a noun, not an adjective, and so I was looking at first for a place, not a food. My knowledge of German things is apparently very shaky, because I faltered badly with GAUSS and then HESSE, despite having seen both before. And then there were the oil wells, the OIL RIG and the GUSHER. I probably wouldn't have had any trouble with OIL RIG if I hadn't had that whole aforementioned SIDESADDLE error. I guess the paired clues continue with that pair of famous mathematicians, NEWTON and GAUSS. So GAUSS is part of two pairs and an answer I didn't know and it sits at the very tip-top of the grid, so this is now The GAUSS Puzzle, nevermind that he has nothing to do with the theme. 

The hardest part of the puzzle, the one that took it out of the normal / Medium range a bit for me, was the NE, where UNDOSEND was an absolute ???? I didn't know you could actually undo a send, and so parsing that word was a nightmare, down (almost) to the last letter. And that trouble came on top of a brutal (if clever) clue for REMOTE (22A: It can be a show-stopper), which made that section hard to get into in the first place, and a clue on BIG TALK that I had seen before but completely forgot (12D: Rodomontade). I had the -ALK and thought "well, it's probably some kind of WALK." It really sounds like a WALK. Either a walk you do during some segment of some fancy dance, or a WALKway ... perhaps through a garden. "Have you seen Chester?" "Yes, I believe he's taking his morning constitutional on the rodomontade." "Did he have his top hat, monocle, and cane with him?" "Of course he did, he's not a barbarian! Do you think he'd risk causing a foofaraw on the rodomontade? I should think not!" I blame the word "promenade," at least a little, for my "rodomontade" = WALK confusion. 

Other things:

• The ERMA in 60A: "Forever, ___" (1996 humor book) is ERMA Bombeck
• ISOLDE is from Wagner's "Tristan und ISOLDE"
• PUBS are [Round houses?] because you order rounds ... of drinks in them
• An OIL RIG is "well-placed" because it's placed ... by a well (an oil well)
• "THE NAME GAME" is ... well, if you don't know if, or if you do, it's a fine way to round out this write-up:

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

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Classic brand of candy wafers / SUN 5-31-20 / Opposite of une adversaire / Myth propagated to promote social harmony in Plato's Republic / Magical teen of Archie Comics / 2017 hit movie about an Olympic skater / Songbird with dark iridescent plumage

Constructor: Lewis Rothlein and Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (time in the 12s, but I stopped a bunch for screen shots, so I'd say at least a minute less than that) (oh and I've had a margarita, so probably need a difficulty adjustment there, too)

THEME: "What Goes Up Must Come Down" — themers have internal palindromes and those are represented in the grid by letters that literally go up (i.e. you read them up) and then down (i.e. you read the same letters back down) before continuing on with the non-palindromic rest of the answer:

Theme answers:

• MOBILE LIBRARIES (32A: Providers of books to remote locations)
• JUVENILE DELINQUENCY (34A: Unlawful activity by a minor)
• MEDICINAL PLANTS (66A: Some natural remedies)
• COMMERCE SECRETARY (69A: Cabinet position once held by Herbert Hoover)
• INOPPORTUNE MOMENT (104A: Untimely time)
• ELABORATE DETAIL (107A: Great depth)

Word of the Day: LENA (43D: Long river of Siberia) —

The Lena (Russian: Ле́на, IPA: [ˈlʲɛnə]; Evenki: Елюенэ, Eljune; Yakut: Өлүөнэ, Ölüöne; Buryat: Зүлхэ, Zülkhe; Mongolian: Зүлгэ, Zülge) is the easternmost of the three great Siberian rivers that flow into the Arctic Ocean (the other two being the Ob' and the Yenisey). Permafrost underlies most of the catchment, 77% of which is continuous. The Lena is the eleventh-longest river in the world. [...] The Lena massacre was the name given to the 1912 shooting-down of striking goldminers and local citizens who protested at the working conditions in the mine near Bodaybo in northern Irkutsk. The incident was reported in the Duma (parliament) by Kerensky and is credited with stimulating revolutionary feeling in Russia.

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov may have taken his alias, Lenin, from the river Lena, when he was exiled to the Central Siberian Plateau. (wikipedia)

• • •

Hello! Or should I say, HELLO! (19A: Word whose rise in popularity coincided with the spread of the telephone). I have been realizing, slowly, as this pandemic wears on, that what I want most from crosswords isn't technical proficiency or theme pyrotechnics. It's fun. Joy. Yes, there's always some inherent joy in filling in boxes, getting the right answers, etc. But I will take a simple silly gimmick if it's genuinely ridiculous and warm-hearted and entertaining. Are you having fun or just going through the motions? Does the puzzle exist in order to fill space or does it seem designed to amuse? Has it been slapped together with all the usual old fill / clues, or has it been crafted with care and wit. Does it have at least a little currency? A little now-ness? A smile to offer? A wink? A slight "'sup?" of a head nod? I'm trying to figure out why this puzzle, which seems competent enough, just left me cold. I think that, once I saw what the themers were going to do, I thought, "well ... I guess they're just gonna do that ... some more." And they did. And then the puzzle was over. There was nothing more to it than the up and the down gimmick. And look, it's structurally at least interesting, and probably technically at least a little hard to pull off while also maintaining passable fill. But the overall effect was about as fun as tossing and catching a ball lightly in one hand, over and over. The tosses aren't remarkable in themselves. They don't connect to one another, or have anything in common. There's no revealer, no "here's why we did this!" Just the metronomic up and down of the bouncing ball. Just 'cause. And the fill was, with a few exceptions, industry standard. Shrug. I expect much more than a shrug. These days, I *need* much more than a shrug.


Here was my opening gambit:

ENIAC sets off mild alarms. Stalesness alarms. But I press on.

At this point, still not feeling great about things, but then I haven't gotten any answer over 5 letters, so let's keep going and see what happens? This is just after I "get" the theme:

Thought JUVENILE went through, then couldn't get the "I" to work, eventually got EQUIP and bingo, there was the theme. I thought maybe the up/down part would spell something or have some meaning or ... something. But that never panned out. Just a whole lot more up/down.


The clue on CELIBATE is just wrong, or at least wildly inappropriate. A "virgin" is someone who has not had sex. A CELIBATE person has made a deliberate choice to abstain from sex, usually for religious reasons. This answer makes my bile rise (not really, I just wanted to say that because BILE is literally "rising" inside this answer). Let's see, what else? I wrote in EUGENE instead of HELENA, so that was fun (14D: State capital in Lewis and Clark county). You'd think I'd've remembered that the capital of Oregon is SALEM, but no. I also wrote in ELLS and LIGHT (!?) before ERAS (111D: Museum sections, perhaps) and ANGLE (122A: Selfie taker's concern). I liked IMPOUND LOT better than anything in this grid, I think. I also appreciated the genderless I.T. PEOPLE (51A: Bug experts, informally). I would've spelled MEANY with an -IE (71D: Villain). NOBLE LIE seems like a really dumb answer you'd never use if it hadn't been in some wordlist somewhere (109A: Myth propagated to promote social harmony, in Plato's "Republic"). GET A FLAT has big EAT A SANDWICH energy (84A: Pop a wheelie?). Mostly the fill is just flat. MATTE. Dull.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. I love you, Minneapolis

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