Stuffed Jewish dish / THU 4-7-22 / Jordan Peele's production company named for a classic horror short story / 1981 video game that featured the first appearance of Mario / Purchases for a high-tech hobby

Constructor: Lucy Howard and Ross Trudeau

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: TURNKEYS (48A: Jailers ... or a hint to "unlocking" four answers in this puzzle) — four Down answers intersect the letter string "KEY," which must be "turned" 90 degrees to become part of the Down answers in order for those answers to make any sense:

Theme answers:

• WHIS(KEY) JUG (3D: Moonshine container)
• MON(KEY) PAW (9D: Jordan Peele's production company, named for a classic horror short story)
• DON(KEY) KONG (36D: 1981 video game that featured the first appearance of Mario)
• TUR(KEY) DAY (40D: Thanksgiving)

Word of the Day: EBOY (41D: Gen-Z style with emo and anime influences) —

E-girls and e-boys, sometimes collectively known as e-kids, are a youth subculture that emerged in the late 2010s, notably popularized by the video-sharing app TikTok. It is an evolution of emo, scene and mall goth fashion combined with Japanese street fashion (such as anime, cosplay, kawaii and lolita fashion) and K-pop fashion.

Videos by e-girls and e-boys tend to be flirtatious and, many times, overtly sexual. Eye-rolling and protruding tongues (a facial expression known as ahegao, imitating climaxing) are common.

According to Business Insider, the terms are not gender-specific, instead referring to two separate styles of fashion, stating that "While the e-boy is a vulnerable 'softboi' and embraces skate culture, the e-girl is cute and seemingly innocent". (wikipedia)

• • •

Several things conspired to make this the hardest Thursday I've solved in a while. First NOOB. Which was not spelled that way. Somehow (1A: Beginner, in lingo = NEWB) (side note: what lingo? maybe name it? as is, it looks like there's a word missing from the clue). But even after clearing that up, I was staring at WHISE JUG and thinking that there was simply a type of jug that I had not heard of before. Maybe the constructors have one of those ridiculously massive and not properly curated wordlists and the obscure WHISE JUG was some 19th-century holdover that had found its way onto said list. I dunno. I just accepted that the answer was WHISE JUG. Further, I've somehow never heard of a KISHKA, which ... how? (6D: Stuffed Jewish dish). KNISH, sure. KISHKA somehow got past me. So that just made me feel bad about myself (not the puzzle's fault, obv). Further further, the cluing was weird and had me writing in wrong answers frequently. UNIONIZES before UNIONISTS was bad (17A: Organized workers). Are UNIONISTS just ... union members? Like me? I guess that's an OK term, but not good enough for me to enjoy your obviously deliberately misdirective clue (when the misdirection answer is stronger than your own answer, then the misdirection actually works against you). Still not sure what the clue on BEAM is doing (13D: Big smile). BEAM is a verb. If I smile, I do not have a BEAM on my face. I'd sooner drink from a WHISE JUG than sport a BEAM. But the clue means the answer *has* to be a noun. So ... the puzzle was very much a slog up top. It got less sloggy when I finally got the theme and realized that WHISE JUG was not, in fact, a thing I was being asked to accept. But it remained pretty sloggy at the clue and (desperate-to-be-current) fill level. ROBOT KITS was absolutely joyless. Really expecting something new and fancy but just got ... two words that might go next to each other. Not even sure what these kits are, or why you are buying so many. I think the theme is clever enough, and certainly the bottom half was easier to enjoy / appreciate once I understood the theme. But only JOCKEY FOR felt properly original and interesting as an answer.

[I was *this* far before I "got" the theme]

[Impostor syndrome feeling] is way, way, way too specific a clue for DOUBT. Without the SELF- in front of DOUBT, it actually feels just flat-out wrong. If I've heard of E-BOY, I forgot, and as I read about it (see "Word of the Day" entry, above), it was clear why I forgot. My brain was protecting me from things I shouldn't know. TikTok is a lot of rich tech guys getting richer by selling screen addiction and mental health problems disguised as youth agency (fun! empowerment! youth!). But I'm old so my opinions are easily ignorable. I do get it. But I'll take "old guy who is highly suspicious of TikTok" to "non-teen pretending to be down with TikTok in a desperate attempt to be relevant." Anyway, the deleterious effects of TikTok (and other forms of social media) are well known, even if you choose to ignore them. Here's Amanda Hess in the NYT:

Besides the whole NOOB fiasco, the worst mistake-pit I fell in was the GAS / GEL pit ... which is to say I wrote in GAS and then "confirmed" it with GEL before ultimately realizing the answers were actually HAY and HAT, respectively (34A: Fuel for a mustang? / 34D: Solution to a bad hair day). The lowercase "m" on "mustang" should've clued me in that it wasn't the car, but ... I solve before 5am, so sometimes, the wires, the brain wires, they have connectivity issues. Last thing I'll say is that MURMUR is not a [Soothing sound]. It's an annoying inaudible speech sound. Or it implies rumor / gossip, which can suck. At best, it's an R.E.M. album. COOING is a [Soothing sound]. I guess a brook can MURMUR pleasantly, but unless I am standing right next to Wordsworth, I am not apt to make the MURMUR-"soothing" connection. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

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Diarist who documented Great Plague of London / SUN 1-24-21 / Blueberries for kid-lit classic / Only Stratego piece with letter on it / Maker of X6 and Z4

Constructor: Lucy Howard and Ross Trudeau

Relative difficulty: Easy (8:47)

THEME: "Sugar, Sugar" — wacky phrases made out of candy names:

Theme answers:

• NERDS RING POP (22A: Bookworms call dad?)
• BABY RUTH SNICKERS (31A: A young Justice Ginsburg chuckles?)
• CRUNCH NOW AND LATER (47A: Do core exercises all day, every day?)
• WHOPPERS SPREE (67A: Burger King bingefest?)
• MILKY WAY STARBURST (84A: Supernova in our galaxy?)
• LIFESAVERS PAYDAY (103A: When E.M.T.s bring home the bacon?)
• MARS SMARTIES (115A: Some astronomy PhD.s?)

Word of the Day: Tones and I (37A: Singer Watson, a.k.a. Tones and I with the 2019 dance hit "Dance Monkey" => TONI) —

Toni Watson, known professionally as Tones and I, is an Australian singer and songwriter. Her breakout single, "Dance Monkey", was released in May 2019 and reached number one in over 30 countries. 

In 2019, she broke the Australian record for the most weeks at number one on the ARIA Singles Chart by any artist with 16 weeks. By mid-January 2020, "Dance Monkey" had spent its 24th and final week at number one, beating Bing Crosby's all-time Australian record for his version of "White Christmas", which spent 22 weeks (five months, namely June to October) at the top spot in 1943.

"Dance Monkey" was accredited 13× platinum by ARIA for shipments of over 910,000 units, in October 2020. Tones was the most awarded artist at the ARIA Music Awards of 2019, winning four from eight nominations. Tones and I released her debut extended play, The Kids Are Coming, on 30 August 2019, which peaked at number three in Australia, and top 10 in several countries. (wikipedia)

• • •

Tame wacky is always so depressing. There are no laughs here, and not much in the way of real cleverness. There's a core idea—a theme type I've seen before ... I'd be stunned if I hadn't seen this exact theme at some point in my life. But once you piece the first themer together, once you grasp the concept, solving mainly just involves thinking of candy names. The particular humor of the clue doesn't matter much, and in most cases isn't really there. Remember some candies! That's all you do here. Except for FANTASY SERIES (which felt new / interesting) the fill doesn't do much that's interesting either. This is placeholder stuff; just absolutely typical, run-of-the-mill, utterly characteristic late 20th-century NYTXW fare. It clears the bar. It's passable. But it's not innovative, and it doesn't even offer much of a new or vibrant take on an old concept. It's just there. It's fine. It'll pass the time for 15 minutes or a half hour or an hour or whatever. Ho + hum. Still not sure how the marquee puzzle remains this tepid, week in and week out. 

The image of a snickering baby Ruth Ginsburg is probably the highlight of the puzzle, in that it's bizarre, and therefore offers a memorable image. something to sear your brain. Everything else is so milquetoast. Wacky puzzles have to get weird, or else they get very tedious (polite smile-quaint) very quickly. NERDS calling their dad, also on the better side of this theme set. But the rest are forgettable. They don't even seem to be really trying. Smaller nit—I don't think "now and later" means "all day, every day." If I do something now and later, then I do it at two discrete times, with a gap in between. The clue is incorrect on a literal level (never a good thing). I did blow through the puzzle pretty quickly, which is always a nice feeling. As usual, the struggles came in the first half of the solve, and the second half was a sprint by comparison (if you watch the solving video I made for yesterday's puzzle, you can see this phenomenon happen quite clearly—2/3 of the time to solve the first half, and 1/3 to solve the last; night and day). 

The NW of course tripped me up a bit. I always start there, and since you start with nothing, that's when you're likeliest to go wrong. Small wrong was ONS for INS (5D: Walk-___). Bigger wrong was PACK UP for TANK UP (not a phrase I heard growing up, and I grew up in car country, i.e. California). Had NEMEANS (!?!?) before NUBIANS, so that slowed things down a bit (also no idea about TONI, who isn't even known by her real name, so ????). The slowest part by far, though, was the NE. Fill-in-the-blank clue (BRAIN) and BMW and WMD all eluded me (wanted a 3-letter version of ICBM, or maybe IED, for that last one) (I never think of WMD as real ... the only time I've ever heard it used is in Bush-era war propaganda) (14D: Subject of intl. treaties). Wanted NGO instead of the mere ORG. at 15A: Doctors Without Borders, e.g.: Abbr.). Haven't played Stratego since I was maybe 14, so SPY was meaningless to me (in general, I find puzzles overestimate how common board game knowledge is ... which reminds me ... maybe I've seen this puzzle type done with board games before? Cereal brands? I know I've seen it ... movie titles, maybe? The whole "making wacky phrases out of names from some category" is definitely a thing). I don't think of what a pen does to your shirt pocket as a mere INK MARK (wanted BLOT or something equally evocative of mess). So I fumbled a bunch up there. But after I escaped, whoosh. No trouble except for the SERIES part of FANTASY SERIES (after I couldn't get NOVEL to fit, I was stuck until crosses came to the rescue). Now I have an urge to reread the "Earthsea" series. If a puzzle inspires you to read Ursula K. LeGuin, it can't be all bad. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. LAST CHANCE: Boswords is gearing up for another online crossword tournament in the very near future. Here's the blurb from co-organizer, John Lieb:

Registration is now open for the Boswords 2021 Winter Wondersolve, an online crossword tournament, which will be held on Sunday, January 31 from 2:00 to 5:00 p.m. Eastern. Solvers can compete individually or in pairs and will complete four puzzles (three themed and one themeless) edited by Brad Wilber. To register, to see the constructors, and for more details, go to www.boswords.org.

Many of my readers and friends really enjoyed the last one of these, so even if you've never competed in a crossword tourney before, you should consider it. ("Competition" isn't really the point)

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