Pelican pal of Nemo in "Finding Nemo" / SUN 8-6-23 / Parenting author Eda or meditation author Lawrence / Romance author Huang / One-named vocalist with the hits "Foolish" and "Happy" / "Swan Lake" heroine / Person on the high C's?

Constructor: Lisa Senzel and Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: "What's Hanging?" — theme answers are in the shape of a DROP-LEAF TABLE, with the leaves down (105A: Piece of furniture with parts that fold down, as depicted seven times in this puzzle); so the theme answers (which are clued in the first "leaf"—an apparently short Down answer) run up for a few letters and then Across for however many letters, and then back down for another three letters (the first "leaf" runs in reverse, then the flat part of each "table top" spells out a word that has its own, separate clue, then the second leaf just drops down and has no clue at all):

Theme answers:

• ALLITERATION (1D: Feature of "Peter Pan" and "Black Beauty")
• BAKING STONES (12D: Slabs for making pizza or bread)
• OPERA SINGER (33D: Person on the high C's?)
• KARATE LESSONS (61D: Dojo offerings)
• ENVIRONMENTAL (66D: Part of E.P.A.)
• APRICOT TART (117D: Orange-colored fruit pastry)
• SEA SHANTIES (121D: Sailors' songs)

Word of the Day: Lawrence LESHAN (102D: Parenting author Eda or meditation author Lawrence) —

Lawrence LeShan (September 8, 1920 – November 9, 2020) was an American psychologist, educator and the author of the best-selling How to Meditate (1974) a practical guide to meditation. He authored or co-authored approximately 75 articles in the professional literature and thirteen books on a diverse range of topics including psychotherapy, war, cancer treatment, and mysticism. He also wrote science fiction under the pseudonym Edward Grendon. [...] In the 1960s and 1970s, LeShan conducted extensive research in the field of parapsychology. In his book The Medium, the Mystic, and the Physicist: Toward a General Theory of the Paranormal, he investigated paranormal topics, mystical thought and quantum mechanics. In the book LeShan claimed to have tested his hypothesis of "clairvoyant reality". He said the results were a success and he could heal with mental power and train others to do the same. However, Tim Healey wrote the results were not convincing as nine of his students had eight attempts at using a clairvoyant training technique and all scored four to fives misses. // In World of the Paranormal: The Next Frontier, LeShan advanced his paranormal ideas further, claiming that psychic abilities such as  clairvoyance, precognition and telepathy can be explained using quantum theory. // In the 1980s, LeShan's focus shifted to the psychotherapy of cancer support, a field in which he is considered a pioneer. LeShan lived in New York City. LeShan was married to the late Eda LeShan, who was also a writer. He died at the age of 100 in 2020.

• • •

First of all, what is going on with the title? Like ... what phrase ... is that? Is it a play on words? If so, which words? I've never heard the expression "What's Hanging?" in my life. "What's Happening?" yes. "How's It Hanging?" unfortunately, yes. But "What's Hanging?" I don't know what that phrase is supposed to evoke. I literally don't know what it means. When I googled it in quotation marks just now, literally the first hit is the NYT puzzle site. There has *got* to be a better title for this thing. Surely there is a better "hanging"-based pun you can find if you try hard enough. "A Little Off the Sides," there, there's a barbershop-based pun if you want one. I'm not saying it's good, I came up with it in like five seconds. What I am saying is that "What's Hanging?" is nonsensical. As for the theme itself, it's missing that next level that would make it really good. It's just ... answers in a kind of table shape, or table-top shape, I guess, with the "leaves" folded down on either end. There's nothing ... table-y about the answers or the words that appear as the flat parts of the table top, nothing that elevates the theme and makes it more than just shape-based. The theme answers (and the regular Across answers they contain) are all arbitrary and unrelated to each other or any larger concept. So, a bunch of phrases have been bent into an up-across-up table-like shape. Over and over. The end. And you have to endure gibberish in the "leaves." I guess filling in these themers was more fun, or at least requires more thought, than filling in your typical non-shape-based theme answers. But there just wasn't any thematic oomph to this. It's fine. It's got a creative idea at its core. But the execution is lackluster.

Lots and lots of name trivia again today, but nothing that can't be worked around via crosses, I don't think. My mystery names were Romance author ANA Huang, Mustafa KEMAL Atatürk (I knew "Atatürk," but not the KEMAL bit), NIGEL the Pelican ... and that's it, I think. I didn't know Lawrence LESHAN, but EDA is crosswordese from waaaaaay back, so she helped me get LESHAN. There were two parts of the grid that held me up a bit. The first involved a wrong answer I was sure was right: -IAN at 60A: Follower of Christ? (-INA). You would think the simple transposition of two letter could cause much havoc, but you'd be wrong. Actually, you'd be right, it wasn't much havoc, but it was some havoc, especially when it came time to make sense of the tall bird I couldn't possibly imagine, with a name spelled "something something -NNE. Needed SMARTED (57A: Stung) to finally discover the error of my ways. The other semi-thorny section was the very bottom middle. I somehow couldn't remember the DROP-LEAF part of DROP-LEAF TABLE, so I just had TABLE, which meant no help with that roughly 5x5 section at the center-bottom, and I didn't have much luck at all at first pass, except with ARTOO ... which eventually got me ALTAR ... and then I realized the Apple in question was musician FIONA Apple ... and well then I was in business, but it was a harrowing 20 seconds or so there, I assure you. Oh, right, that was the section that abutted the dreadful POT SHOPS. We call them dispensaries. There are now two within walking distance of my house. I don't smoke, but POT SHOPS seems odd/bad. If you were talking about POT SHOPS, I would just assume you were saying "POT SHOTS," which is what I actually wrote in at one point, wondering if that was some pot terminology I was as yet unaware of. "Is SHOT a word for 'hit' or 'toke' now?" I wondered unaloud. But finally DROP-LEAF came to the rescue with its helpful "P" and ... mystery solved. 

This will tell you something about my word nerdery, but my favorite answer in the whole grid was ETYMOLOGICAL (63D: Concerned with roots). Something about it was just so clear and satisfying, after all the damn awkward table-building I'd been doing. I also enjoyed MANGER SCENES (67D: Christmas displays). Twin pillars of the grid, those two. Very nice. I think I also like "LET 'ER RIP," but only because it looks so ridiculous in the grid. "Let Errip what? And what the hell kind of a name is Errip?" One last thing ... and this maybe relates to my very first thing, which is: what does the puzzle think a pun is? The title ... isn't one (that I can tell), and "You just broke my toe, SIS," dear lord, how is that a pun? (131A: "You just broke my toe, ___ (biology pun)). I *get* that "mitosis" is the "biology" concept that is being allegedly punned on here, but ... what is the context for this pun? When / how / why would one make it? I'm at a loss. It's such a godawful stretch to imagine anyone's saying it at any time anywhere. Even the drunkest punster isn't likely to stumble into this one. It's pure absurdity. And not the good kind of absurdity that can make puns bearable, but ... just absurdity. Why would you do this to SIS? Did your sister hurt you in some way? A true headshaker.

I would normally do a run down of my favorite puzzles of July at this point, but I was out for much of July and have not gone back and solved the puzzles I missed while on vacation. So I'll do that and come back at the end of August (beginning of September) for a big July/August round-up. Enjoy the rest of your weekend. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Singer Anita of the swing era / TUE 3-1-22 / Hang on a sec in texts / 2010-13 HBO series set shortly after Hurricane Katrina / Eye layer containing the Iris / Actor Platt of Dear Evan Hansen

Constructor: Lisa Senzel and Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Easy (wink)

THEME: The BIG EASY (56A: Nickname for New Orleans, celebrated by the answers to the starred clues and suggested by the shaded squares) — a basic New Orleans trivia test (in celebration of MARDI GRAS) with a "big" "E" and a "big" "Z" at the end (the "big" letters are actually just 2x2 sections filled with the same letter four times—"E" in once case, "Z" in the other—but use your imagination...)

Theme answers:

• BAYOU (5A: *Gulf Coast waterway)
• GUMBO (1D: *Cajun stew)
• "TREMÉ" (13D: *2010-13 HBO series set shortly after Hurricane Katrina)
• BOURBON STREET 28A: *Main drag of the French Quarter)
• MARDI GRAS (34A: *Celebration with king cakes)
• ÉTOUFFÉE (37D: *Cajun shellfish-over-rice dish)
• LIVE JAZZ (40D: *Music heard at Preservation Hall)

Word of the Day: ALAIN Locke (64A: Harlem Renaissance writer Locke) —

Alain Leroy Locke (September 13, 1885 – June 9, 1954) was an American writer, philosopher, educator, and patron of the arts. Distinguished in 1907 as the first African-American Rhodes Scholar, Locke became known as the philosophical architect —the acknowledged "Dean"— of the Harlem Renaissance. He is frequently included in listings of influential African Americans. On March 19, 1968, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. proclaimed: "We're going to let our children know that the only philosophers that lived were not Plato and Aristotle, but W. E. B. Du Bois and Alain Locke came through the universe." [...] Locke was the guest editor of the March 1925 issue of the periodical Survey Graphic, for a special edition titled "Harlem, Mecca of the New Negro": about Harlem and the Harlem Renaissance, which helped educate white readers about its flourishing culture. In December of that year, he expanded the issue into The New Negro, a collection of writings by him and other African Americans, which would become one of his best-known works. A landmark in black literature (later acclaimed as the "first national book" of African America), it was an instant success. Locke contributed five essays: the "Foreword", "The New Negro", "Negro Youth Speaks", "The Negro Spirituals", and "The Legacy of Ancestral Arts". This book established his reputation as "a leading African-American literary critic and aesthete."

Locke's philosophy of the New Negro was grounded in the concept of race-building; that race is not merely an issue of hereditary but is more an issue of society and culture. He raised overall awareness of potential black equality; he said that no longer would blacks allow themselves to adjust or comply with unreasonable white requests. This idea was based on self-confidence and political awareness. Although in the past the laws regarding equality had been ignored without consequence by white America, Locke's philosophical idea of The New Negro allowed for fair treatment. Because this was an idea and not a law, people held its power. If they wanted this idea to flourish, they were the ones who would need to "enforce" it through their actions and overall points of view. (wikipedia)

• • •

There's not much to this, as a puzzle. It's an assortment of symmetrical arranged words related, with varying degrees of specificity, to MARDI GRAS (which is today, I'm guessing ... my brain is still on Pandemic Time, i.e. No Time, and the war in Ukraine isn't really helping my time/space awareness). Easy puzzle, easy trivia test, EZ. The one thing that elevates it slightly is that "EZ" gimmick at the bottom of the grid. The gimmick doesn't really work, visually. I thought maybe the newspaper version has just one "big" cell for the "E" and the "Z," but it looks like there are just four regular cells shaded gray. You have to draw your own "big" letters at the end. The app probably changes those cells to big cells at the end, along with some confetti visual effects and music and other bells & whistles nonsense. Just hypothesizing. Anyway, there are four "E"s and four "Z"s and the "big" is in your heart, if you even have one, you monster (this is me talking to me now). Still, I like the "Z" corner a lot. Normally when someone tries to cram a lot of Scrabbly letters into a small corner, the results are very much not worth it and I cry 'foul." But today, that little section is the most entertaining part of the puzzle by far. "BZZT!" is oddly charming, and then throw in LIZZO (an accomplished flutist) playing some LIVE JAZZ at Preservation Hall, and you've got a very FIZZy corner. They also managed to fit not one but two political liberation movements in there (civil rights, women's LIB). Yes, I'm quite taken with this corner. I also think BOURBON STREET over MARDI GRAS looks great as a big bold stack right at the heart of the grid. The rest of it doesn't get much above a connect-the-dots level of interest. But maybe the visual gimmick is enough. It's breezy, it's easy, the mood is nice and festive ... it's hard to be mad at a MARDI GRAS puzzle, is what I'm saying.

The fill skews crosswordesey due at least in part to the way the grid is built, i.e. with a ton of 3- / 4- / 5-letter answers. UVEA YURT and ALOU O'DAY and so on. The once-ubiquitous NEVE even makes a reappearance. Lots and lots of repeaters, but you can just fill them in and move on, and they don't really detract much from the main event, i.e. the theme (or, as I'm calling it today, the THEMÉ). 

Today I learned that the Gr. word for "cloud" is nephos (46A: What nephology is the study of => CLOUDS). I also learned that "nephology" isn't used much any more as a meteorological term. I was then reminded (by my own curiosity and googling) that "nephrology" is the study of the kidneys, and "phrenology" is a pseudoscience involving the measuring of cranial bumps—it's also a fantastic album by The Roots.

Maybe next year we'll get a king cake-themed puzzle and we'll have to find a BABY somewhere in the grid. I am deadly serious. And hungry. Please, constructors, get on this. [nevermind, it seems my wish has already come true]:

See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. BRB = "be right back" (29D: "Hang on a sec," in texts)

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