Question during a brainstorming session / THU 7-16-26 / Alcohol, slangily / Feline in a 2000s meme / Symbol of spiritual insight, in Hinduism / Common garnish in a chirashi bowl / Galápagos island that was home to Lonesome George, the last tortoise of his subspecies / Music genre with "walking" bass lines / Business whose rewards program gives "Stackholder Perks"

Constructor: Zhou Zhang and Mallory Montgomery

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: "DOES THIS HAVE LEGS?" (61A: Question during a brainstorming session ... or of the answers to the starred clues) — theme answers are all the "THIS" in the question "DOES THIS HAVE LEGS?"; questions are all imagined replies to the question:

Theme answers:

• IRONMAN TRIATHLON (18A: *Yes—three arduous ones)
• MILLIPEDE (29A: *Yes—sometimes more than 1,000)
• DIRECT FLIGHT (37A: *Yes—exactly one, in common usage)
• YARDSTICK (50A: *No—but it does have three feet)

Word of the Day: PINTA (16A: Galápagos island that was home to Lonesome George, the last tortoise of his subspecies) —

Pinta Island (Spanish: Isla Pinta) is one of the Galápagos Islands in Ecuador, west of South America. Pinta has an area of 60 km² (23 sq mi) and a maximum altitude of 777 meters (2,549 ft). // The Spanish name Pinta—an adjective meaning "spotted"—honors the Pinta, the nickname of one of the three ships of Christopher Columbus's first voyage. Santa Maria Island is similarly named for another one of his vessels and Pinzón Island is partially named for the Pinta's captain Martín Alonso Pinzón. [...] Pinta was the original home to Lonesome George, perhaps the most famous tortoise in the Galápagos Islands. He was the last known representative of the subspecies Chelonoidis nigra abingdonii. The most northern major island in the Galápagos, at one time Isla Pinta had a thriving tortoise population. The island's vegetation was devastated over several decades by introduced feral goats, thus diminishing food supplies for the native tortoises. A prolonged effort to exterminate goats introduced to Pinta was completed in 1990, and the vegetation of the island is starting to return to its former state. (wikipedia)

• • •

I know the expression "to have legs," as in "to last," but I am not familiar with the brainstorming convention of asking the question "DOES THIS HAVE LEGS?" Perhaps I have not been in on a lot of brainstorming sessions. Almost certainly, yes, this is true. Is this a business-world thing? It's kind of redolent of businessspeak. Anyway, the revealer was kind of a let-down today, just because it meant very little to me as an expression. I do think there's something cute about the whole theme idea, especially the cluing premise. I was slower today than I should've been simply because I refused to jump down to the bottom and get the revealer first. I could tell it was gonna be one of those puzzles where starting at the end would make the rest of it much easier, but I decided to power through without breaking stride. I had to get all of IRONMAN TRIATHLON before I began to understand what the thing in question was, and it was only after I got MILLIPEDE that I knew that that thing was "leg." Sadly, I had written in GST instead of GMT at 24D: Clock-setting std. (Greenwich Mean Time), so I didn't have the "M" for MILLIPEDE, so the "leg"-ness of it all was slow in coming. I also had trouble understanding what the DIRECT FLIGHT clue was going for (37A: *Yes—exactly one, in common usage). The "in common usage" part really threw me. I had no idea what it was doing. I was looking for a common phrase in which someone spoke of one ... something. I still don't really understand why "in common usage" is necessary. Is DIRECT FLIGHT a slangy expression? Is there a different expression "in formal usage"? How is DIRECT FLIGHT a phrase that needs any kind of qualification?? The clue feels overwritten, which (for me) resulted in confusion. And not the good kind of confusion, either. Not the "whoa, you tricked me, good one" kind. The "this should've been clearer" kind. The puzzle gets some points off for using the same meaning of "leg" twice (with both IRONMAN TRIATHLON and DIRECT FLIGHT, the "leg" is a "segment"), but then it gets those points back for going with an inventive, unexpected "No" answer at YARDSTICK (50A: *No—but it does have three feet). The theme was creative, even if the revealer didn't really resonate with me.

The puzzle was on the easy side again, with only the themers providing any real resistance. If your time was a little slow, it's probably because of the oversized grid (16x15). I had one very real struggle point today, and it fittingly involved the one-word clue [Struggle] (8D). I wrote in STRIVE with total confidence and when almost every cross confirmed it, I kept it there. I just couldn't figure out why I couldn't come up with a good "V"-containing answer for 26A: Spoil. I ended up with DEVILE and every time I checked the crosses of DEVILE ... nope, no problems, everything checks out! I just stared at DEVILE like ... "well, you look like a word. You kind of sound like a word. How have I lived over a half a century and never heard of you, DEVILE?" I think the ambiguity of [Spoil] made matters (much) worse. "Spoil" as in "dote on"? "Spoil" as in "go bad"? Actually, neither of those things. "Spoil" as in "ruin, mar, desecrate," i.e. DEFILE. And it's STRIFE ... [Struggle] is a noun, not a verb. I just finished reading the first two books of Colson Whitehead's Harlem Trilogy, and much of it is set in an area of Harlem known colloquially as "Striver's Row": 

The St. Nicholas Historic District, known colloquially as "Striver's Row", is a historic district located on both sides of West 138th and West 139th Streets between Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard (Seventh Avenue) and Frederick Douglass Boulevard (Eighth Avenue), in the Harlem neighborhood of Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is both a national and a New York City historic district, and consists of row houses and associated buildings designed by three architectural firms and built in 1891–93 by developer David H. King Jr. These are collectively recognized as gems of New York City architecture, and "an outstanding example of late 19th-century urban design" [...] King sold very few houses and the development failed, with Equitable Life Assurance Society, which had financed the project, foreclosing on almost all the units in 1895, during an economic depression. By this time, Harlem was being abandoned by white New Yorkers, yet the company would not sell the King houses to blacks, and so they sat empty until 1919–20, when they were finally made available to African Americans for $8,000 each. Some of the units were turned into rooming houses, but generally they attracted both leaders of the black community and upwardly-mobile professionals, or "strivers", who gave the district its colloquial name.

Constant exposure to the name "Striver's Row" over the past couple weeks made the [Struggle] / STRIVE connection feel natural, obvious. So obvious that I'm going to go on pretending DEVILE is a word. It really wants to be a word. It's got an undeniable wordness about it. I think when you DEFILE something super duper bad, you DEVILE it. Yes, that will work.

What else? Oh, PINTA???? With that clue? LOL (Galápagos island that was home to Lonesome George, the last tortoise of his subspecies). I wrote in PALAU there at first and then thought "that ... wasn't a Galápagos island, was it? They let Survivor film in the Galápagos? That can't be right." Correct: that is not right. I guess you use this seemingly obscure clue to avoid mentioning Columbus? Except the island is named after Columbus's ship, so ... as far as avoiding colonizers, that doesn't really work. Maybe the puzzle was deemed too damn easy (not untrue) and so they put in this bit of interesting if depressing trivia about the last tortoise of his subspecies, who died all alone on a rock in the ocean because introduced feral goats destroyed his tortoise ecosystem. You can sneak in the odd bit of strange trivia here and there if all the crosses are fair, and these were. I don't see any other parts of the puzzle that gave me trouble, except for my initial and fairly trivial CHIC / CHI error (1A: Smart = POSH / 1D: Letter after upsilon = PHI).

Bullets:

• 31A: Patooties (BUTTS) — lol I really got turned around on this one, anatomically. Somehow I got the phrase "cutie patooties" and "tootsies" mashed up in my head and somehow convinced myself that "patooties" was a cutesy name for hands, i.e. MITTS. (I know “tootsies” are toes or feet, that was an important step on my associative journey to hands)
• 43A: Common garnish in a chirashi bowl (ROE) — yet another "bowl" I've never heard of. Throw it on the Bowl Pile with AÇAI and POKE and the rest. "Chirashi" means "scattered: "It’s a bed of sushi rice and ingredients “scattered” over the top in a decorative manner" (The Japanese Bar).

• 54A: Country that las islas Canarias are part of (ESPAÑA) — congrats to ESPAÑA on their World Cup semifinal victory over France. Also to Argentina on beating England yesterday. I missed the England / Argentina match because I was in Ithaca seeing The Invite (worth it—genuinely hilarious), but I saw the (beautiful) late goal by Argentina. Excited for the final. Sad the World Cup is winding down. I've grown used to having high-stakes soccer to watch every day, and to seeing colorfully dressed and extremely excited people cheering and crying. August is going to be boring. Am I going to have to get into Premier League? I swore I would not do this...
• 41D: Symbol of spiritual insight, in Hinduism (THIRD EYE) — I feel like Ed Norton's character in The Invite says something about opening his THIRD EYE. I know he talks about being "almost certified" at rolfing. There's something almost parodic about his character's New Agey / wellness / sexploration vibe, but he's so honest and earnest and open that he's hard to laugh at—he becomes something much more than a figure of derision. The movie steers in and around movie tropes very deftly. Mostly it just made me wheeze laughing at how accurate all the awkward "getting to know you / dinner party" dialogue was. And all the sex stuff. That, also, funny. 

• 9D: World's most populous Creole-speaking country (HAITI) — back-to-back HAITI days. I don't really have anything to say about this. Just noticed, is all.
• 12D: Feline in a 2000s meme (LOLCAT) — wikipedia tells me that an "Lolcat" is an "image macro of one or more cats." So it's not one "Feline" so much as an image of one or more felines, with "idiosyncratic and intentionally grammatically incorrect text [...] known as lolspeak" (wikipedia).

• 46D: Music genre with "walking" bass lines (SKA) — a walking bassline is: "A bassline composed of nonsyncopated notes of equal value, used in jazz and baroque music, for example." (wordnik)

That's all for today. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Traditional Vietnamese garment whose name means "long shirt" / THU 5-21-26 / timiL / Fish more formally known as a batomorph / Philanthropic group with a clock face in its logo / The so-called "pineapple isle" / Large-eyed African antelope with a duplicative name / Changed my mind in editing notation / 2000 Eminem single with lines from his "biggest fan" / Something tickled on a piano

Constructor: Zhou Zhang and Mallory Montgomery

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: Change clothes — articles of clothing are clued using visually cryptic clues:

Theme answers:

• BACKWARDS CAP (20A: timiL) (word meaning "cap" is spelled backwards)
• CUT-OFF TEE (35A: Golfer's suppor-) (definition of "tee" gets cut off)
• MINISKIRT (42A: Evade) (word meaning "skirt" is miniaturized)
• STRIPED SOCKS (55A: P | u | n | c | h | e | s) ("stripes" inserted into a word meaning "socks")

Word of the Day: ÁO DÀI (16A: Traditional Vietnamese garment whose name means "long shirt") —

Áo dài (English: /ˈaʊˈzaɪ/; Vietnamese: [ʔaːw˧˦ zaːj˨˩] (North), [ʔaːw˦˥ jaːj˨˩] (South), lit. “long tunic”) is a traditional Vietnamese outfit consisting of a long split tunic worn over silk trousers. It can serve as formalwear for both men and women.

There are inconsistencies in the term áo dài. The currently most common usage is for a Francized design by Nguyễn Cát Tường (whose shop was named "Le Mur"), which is expressly a women's close-fitting design whose shirt is two pieces of cloth sewn together and fastened with buttons. A more specific term for this design would be "áo dài Le Mur". Other writers, especially those who claim its "traditionality", use áo dài as a general category of garments for both men and women, and include older designs such as áo ngũ thân (five-piece shirt), áo tứ thân (four-piece shirt), áo tấc (loose shirt), áo đối khâm (parallel-flap robe), áo viên lĩnh (round-collar robe), áo giao lĩnh (cross-collar robe), áo trực lĩnh (straight-collar robe). (wikipedia)

• • •

[3D: "Bingo!"]

Startled by this puzzle initially because I couldn't believe how easy it was. I should not be able to move through a Thursday grid with this little resistance. It took so long today before I hit a clue that made me hesitate even a bit. In fact, I was literally this far into the grid before I hit a clue I didn't know instantly:

I was thinking of the wrong kind of "interest" and couldn't figure out why ACCRUE wouldn't fit. "IMBUE ... that's not a word for interest." So I switched to crosses, got PIQUE, and off I went again. The puzzle was 90% Monday-easy, on what should be the trickiest day of the week. Now, the theme did make you have to think a little, that's for sure, but when you can work every cross of every theme answer so so easily, you don't really have to sit there thinking—you can just quickly hack your way to a nearly complete answer and then reason it out from there. So my main take away from the puzzle, sadly, was that the editor should've tightened this thing up—a lot. It's insultingly easy for a Thursday. You have to give regular, longtime solvers something to chew on late in the week, come on.

The overall easiness of the puzzle made the one truly original and unfamiliar answer in the puzzle very jarring. Like, you're just feeding me MAA and LLAMA and ORE etc. and then you throw an ÁO DÀI at me!  Yikes. I was like "what are you doing here? you've stumbled into 'Intro To Crosswords'—you want the Advanced Class, down the hall." I was thrilled to have a bit of a struggle and learn a new term, if briefly terrified that the crosses would suddenly fail me and I'd be left with a DNF on what had been, to that point, the easiest Thursday puzzle in the history of the universe. Actually, getting the "correct" answers was particularly reassuring, as AODAI is not a letter string that inspires confidence in an English speaker who is completely ignorant about Vietnamese fashion. "Am I spelling Maggie MAE right? Dear god I hope so." The coolness of ÁO DÀI is, sadly, completely offset by the horrificness of AIS, which crosses it. AIS is never going to fly as a plural. Delete it from your wordlists now, constructors, I'm begging you. First of all, no one wants AI in their crossword. It's being shoved down our throats in every other aspect of our lives, so it would be great if you could not aid and abet the sickening ubiquity, thanks. Also, AIS ... just look at it. On its face, a truly ugly three-letter answer. Detonate it now, you won't regret it.

As for the theme ... I like that the grouping is tight (i.e. the answers to the visual-madness clues are all articles of clothing). I don't think all themes require revealers, but this one probably could've used one simply because ... why? The articles of clothing are arbitrary. They seem to make a nearly-complete outfit, but ... whose? Why not do [Jerks] for HIGH HEELS, for instance?* There's no real logic to the items in clothing, and a clever revealer might've given a greater sense of coherence to the whole endeavor. Also, I'd probably keep all other clothing answers out of my clothing puzzle (sorry, TUXEDO, I know you're a cat, but you're obtrusive. Yeah, and take DIADEM with you). The actual visual trickery in the clues is pretty clever. But I'm having trouble believing in BACKWARDS CAP. I mean, you might wear your baseball cap backwards, sure, but a BACKWARDS CAP is not an article of clothing. It's just a cap ... that you have chosen (why, dudes, why?) to wear backwards. "Yes, excuse me, miss, does this store sell BACKWARDS CAPs?" You see what I mean. The backwardness is not intrinsic. You could, however, buy a CUT-OFF TEE or a MINISKIRT or STRIPED SOCKS, though you probably made your CUT-OFF TEE at home, and if you did, is that really what you call it? I think of "cut-off" as being for jeans and "crop(ped)" as being for shortened tees. A CUT-OFF TEE is a kind of "crop-top," isn't it? Is it? Anyway, those first two themers felt slightly less on-the-money than the second two, but I have to admit that I kinda liked working all the clothing answers out, so ... despite the disheartening easiness and the mild imperfections of the theme, I had a good time.

Bullets:

• 24A: Fish more formally known as a batomorph (RAY) — had the "R" and thought "ROE! ... wait, that's not a kind of fish, that's fish eggs. So ... R- ... R- ... Ruh-roh." And then it came to me. I grew up never thinking of RAY as a standalone word. It was always preceded by stuff like "manta" or "sting" and so RAY never leaps to mind when I see "fish." Just some dude's name.

[There was a brief time in the late '70s when this guy was a cultural phenomenon. No one remembers why. Future archaeologists and/or aliens are going to be like "what the f—?"]

• 46A: Legal boundaries? (ELS) — a "letteral" clue (referring to a letter (or letters) in the clue itself)—the ELS ("L"s) are the first and last letters (i.e. "boundaries") of the word "Legal." To someone who does cryptic crosswords literally every day (i.e. me), this clue is transparent.
• 8D: Philanthropic group with a clock face in its logo (ELKS) — I had no idea. I figured it just had an elk in its logo. Big building with BPOE (Benevolent and Protective Order of ELKS) written on it downtown, never noticed any logo or clock face. Let's have a look:

[Holy cow that is most definitely a clock face. "Elks: We Know What Time It Is!" "Elks: Closed from 5 to 7" "Elks: The Real Plural Is 'Elk,' We Know, We Know"]

• 9D: The so-called "pineapple isle" (LANAI) — thought maybe KAUAI. I was on Maui once and they definitely had pineapples there, too.
• 48D: Large-eyed African antelope with a duplicative name (DIK-DIK) — if this answer was as mysterious to you as ÁO DÀI, I understand. But as a longtime solver, my antelope lexicon is oddly vast (NYALA, ELAND, ORYX, ORIBI, etc.), and so DIK-DIK came to me quickly. Did you know that an auto rickshaw is called a TUK TUK (onomatopoetic for the sound of its two-stroke engine)? Well if not, now you know (TUK TUK = two previous NYTXW appearances) (DIK-DIK: five ... though this is the first in almost 50 years! I must've seen it in other puzzles...).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*"heel" is another word for "jerk" in the sense of "bastard," "asshole," "rat," etc.  

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Nonverbal "well done" / THU 1-8-26 / Heineken subsidiary whose name means "small bodies of water" / One of the two Boolean values, in programming / Like the Coronation Chair in Westminster Abbey / Benefactor with a limited number of grants? / Gimlet base / Snatching sound, in the comics / Mexican street food typically served with cheese, chili and lime / So-called "father of the American cartoon" / Hit TV series set at the fictional William McKinley High School / Tea traders?

Constructor: Mallory Montgomery and Zhou Zhang

Relative difficulty: far too easy

THEME: GRADE INFLATION (39A: College concern seen in 16-, 25-, 49- and 63-Across) — letters of evaluation on a report card ("grades") are raised ("inflated") by one letter in the alphabet, turning the expected answers into different, unclued answers: 

Theme answers:

• HIGH DIVE ("raised" from "HIGH FIVE") (16A: Nonverbal "well done")
• CROP TOPS ("raised" from "DROP TOPS") (25A: Cars with retractable roofs) 
• OVERBOOK ("raised" from "OVERCOOK") (49A: Accidentally burn, perhaps)
• A-LISTERS ("raised" from "BLISTERS") (63A: Results of wearing some uncomfortable shoes)

Word of the Day: 50 CENT (36D: "In da Club" rapper) —

Curtis James Jackson III (born July 6, 1975), known professionally as 50 Cent, is an American rapper, actor, and television producer. Born in Queens, a borough of New York City, Jackson began pursuing a musical career in 1996. In 1999–2000, he recorded his debut album, Power of the Dollar, for Columbia Records. During a shooting in May 2000, he was struck by nine bullets, causing its release to be canceled and Jackson to be dropped from the label. His 2002 mixtape Guess Who's Back? was discovered by Detroit rapper Eminem, who signed Jackson to his label Shady Records (an imprint of Interscope Records) that year. // Jackson has sold over 30 million albums worldwide and earned several accolades, including a Grammy Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, 13 Billboard Music Awards, six World Music Awards, three American Music Awards, and four BET Awards. He starred in the semi-autobiographical film Get Rich or Die Tryin' (2005), which was critically panned. He also appeared in the war film Home of the Brave (2006) and the crime thriller Righteous Kill (2008). Billboard ranked Jackson 17th on its "50 Greatest Rappers" list in 2023, and named him the sixth top artist of the 2000s decade. Rolling Stone ranked Get Rich or Die Tryin' and "In da Club" in its lists of the "100 Best Albums of the 2000s" and "100 Best Songs of the 2000s" at numbers 37 and 13, respectively. (wikipedia)

• • •

***ATTENTION: READERS AND FELLOW SOLVERS*** : It's early January, which means it's time once again for my annual week-long pitch for financial contributions to the blog. Every year I ask readers to consider what the blog is worth to them on an annual basis and give accordingly. 2026 is a big year for me, as Rex Parker Solves the NYT Crossword will celebrate its 20th birthday in September. Two decades. The big 2-0. A score of years. One score and no years ago, I brought forth on this Internet a new blog, conceived in ... I think I'll stop there, but you get the idea. I've been at this a long time, and while it has been my privilege and joy, it has also been (and continues to be) a lot of work. Very early mornings, no days off—well, no days off for the blog. I do have two very able regular subs (Mali and Clare) who write for me once a month, as well as a handful of other folks who stand in for me when I go on vacation. But otherwise, it's just me, every dang day, up by 4am, solving and writing. I've never been this disciplined about anything in my life. Ask anyone. "Is he disciplined about anything else?" "No, he is not. Just this one thing. It's weird." And it's because I have a responsibility to an audience (that's you). Even after nearly 20 years, I'm still genuinely stunned and exceedingly grateful that so many of you have made the blog a part of your daily routine. Ideally, it adds a little value to the solving experience. Teaches you something you didn't know, or helps you look at crosswords in a new way, or makes you laugh (my highest goal, frankly). Or maybe the blog simply offers a feeling of commiseration—a familiar voice confirming that yes, that clue was terrible, or yes, that themer set should have been tighter, or wow, yes, that answer was indeed beautiful. Whether you find it informative or comforting or entertaining or infuriating—or all of the above—if you're reading me on a fairly regular basis, there's something valuable you're getting out of the blog. And I couldn't be happier about that.

["That's upside-down, sweetheart"]

Hopefully by now you can tell that for better or worse, what you get from me is my honest, unvarnished feelings about a puzzle. There's an explanatory element too, sure, but this blog is basically one person's solving diary. Idiosyncratic. Personal. Human. I'm not interested in trying to guess consensus opinion. I'll leave that to A.I. All I can do, all I want to do, is tell you exactly what it was like for me to solve the puzzle—what I thought, what I felt. Because while solving may seem like mere box-filling to outsiders, crossword enthusiasts know that the puzzle actually makes us feel things—joy, anguish, confusion (confusion's a feeling, right?). Our feelings might not always be rational, but dammit, they're ours, and they're worth having. And sharing. I love that crosswords engage the messy, human side of you, as well as the objective, solution-oriented side. If I just wanted to fill in boxes, without any of the messy human stuff, I'd solve sudoku (no shade, sudoku fans, they're just not for me!).

[conferring w/ my editor]

Over the years, I have received all kinds of advice about "monetizing" the blog, invitations to turn it into a subscription-type deal à la Substack or Patreon. And maybe I'd make more money that way, I don't know, but that sort of thing has never felt right for me. And honestly, does anyone really need yet another subscription to manage? As I've said in years past, I like being out here on this super old-school blogging platform, just giving it away for free and relying on conscientious addicts like yourselves to pay me what you think the blog's worth. It's just nicer that way. How much should you give? Whatever you think the blog is worth to you on a yearly basis. Whatever that amount is is fantastic. Some people refuse to pay for what they can get for free. Others just don't have money to spare. All are welcome to read the blog—the site will always be open and free. But if you are able to express your appreciation monetarily, here are three options. First, a Paypal button (which you can also find in the blog sidebar on the homepage, as well as at the bottom of every write-up):

Second, a mailing address (checks can be made out to "Michael Sharp" or "Rex Parker") (be sure to date them with the new year, 2026!):

Rex Parker c/o Michael Sharp
54 Matthews St
Binghamton, NY 13905

The third, increasingly popular option is Venmo; if that's your preferred way of moving money around, my handle is @MichaelDavidSharp (the last four digits of my phone are 4878, in case Venmo asks you, which I guess it does sometimes, when it's not trying to push crypto on you, what the hell?!)

All Paypal contributions will be gratefully acknowledged by email. All Venmo contributions will get a little heart emoji, at a minimum :) All snail mail contributions will be gratefully acknowledged with hand-written postcards. I know snail mail is a hassle for most people, but I love it. I love seeing your (mostly) gorgeous handwriting and then sending you my (completely) awful handwriting. The human touch—it's nice. In recent years, my daughter has designed my annual postcards, but this year, grad school and NYC theater work are keeping her otherwise occupied, so I had to seek design help elsewhere. Enter Katie Kosma, who is not only a professional illustrator/designer, but (crucially!) a crossword enthusiast. She listened patiently to my long and disorganized list of ideas and in very short order was able to arrive at this year's design, inspired by film noir title cards. 

I'm very happy with how it turned out. The teeny boxes inside the letters, the copyright credit ("Natick Pictures, Inc."), and especially that pencil lamppost—mwah! I know most people solve online now, and many paper solvers prefer pen, but the pencil just feels iconic, and appropriate for the card's throwback vibe. That lamppost was entirely Katie's creation. She was a dream to work with. Can't say enough good things about her.

Please note: I don't keep a "mailing list" and don't share my contributor info with anyone. And if you give by snail mail and (for some reason) don't want a thank-you card, just indicate "NO CARD." 

Again, as ever, I'm so grateful for your readership. Please know that your support means a lot to me and my family. Now on to today's puzzle... 

• • •

[THIRDS]

First of all: too easy. Too easy. Today, not only too easy, but undersized, so it hardly felt like solving a crossword at all, let alone a Thursday crossword (it is Thursday, right? my regular job doesn't start again for another week and a half, so I'm still drifting through time with no clear sense of what day it is—[checks calendar] yes, Thursday, cool). The puzzle was too easy, the theme was too simple, and the fill was too often short and uninspired. It all just felt somewhat undercooked. I had another one of those "uh oh" moments when starting the puzzle, because the fill ... was not promising. BEL AMA BAHT EMIR is about as crosswordy a way as you can open your puzzle. That is an answer string that bodes ill. And the way the grid is shaped, there's no room for truly interesting fill to thrive, so what we get is corner after corner, nook after cranny, of dull 3-4-5 stuff. The one wonderful exception is the NE corner, which manages to have a ton of zest for a corner where no answer is longer than five letters. The "Z" "K" and "Y" are well integrated (as opposed to uncomfortably wedged) into the corner, and "BINGO!" "AY PAPI!" and "YOINK!" give the whole area an invigorating exclamatory energy. Plus you get a gimlet, which is nice. Classy. Real service. The rest of the nooks and crannies aren't nearly as much fun.

[Pig furriers? Well now I've seen everything]

So, with the fill so constricted that it can't really shine, it's up to the theme to provide most of the interest today, and ... I don't know. I think I would've been more warmly disposed to this theme if it had appeared on a Wednesday. The concept just seems too simple for a Thursday. As soon as you get GRADE INFLATION (not hard), it's immediately clear what the gimmick is going to be—it's going to involve raising letter grades, maybe creating wackiness, or maybe (as today) changing the apparent answer into a completely different answer. Now, the fact that today's clues got answers that they did not "earn" gives the theme a nice resonance with actual grade inflation. That's kinda cool. But the problem for me was that there's absolutely no humor in the execution. There's nothing particularly entertaining or playful going on. Just a bunch of (apparently) wrong or inapt answers. HIGH DIVE isn't entertaining, it's just ... wrong for the clue. So a promising concept fizzles out in the execution. GRADE INFLATION seems like such an obvious theme concept that I thought "I'm surprised this hasn't been done before ... has it been done before?" So I checked and ... yes—and on a Wednesday! (ha, I knew this was a Wednesday theme). Anna Shechtman did a GRADE INFLATION theme back in 2010, but hers involved only Bs becoming As (by far the most common kind of GRADE INFLATION), and hers involved the one thing this grid is missing: wackiness. That is, her answers were not other, actual answers, but absurd answers, like HONEY COMA ([Result of a sweetener overload?]). I didn't think that puzzle was perfect, but leaning into the wackiness helped it be more enjoyable, more memorable. Gave it more personality, at any rate. Today's theme execution is fine—admirable, even, in that getting the "inflated" phrases to be real phrases seems like a real challenge. But from a solving standpoint, the puzzle just didn't pop.

Also, I kind of want to quibble with the last themer. There's something about changing BLISTERS to A-LISTERS that's disappointing, in that "A" actually has evaluative meaning. That is, it's functioning exactly the way a grade functions. If you're doing a grade-based puzzle, then the "grade" element should be masked. There's nothing "grade"-y about any of the other themers (either the base phrases or the "inflated" phrases). Somehow having a grade-based answer as an answer feels like a cheat. Plus, there are other letter-LISTERS. There are, in fact, B-LISTERS, so the "change" in that case just isn't as, I don't know, "change"-y as it should be. 

As for difficulty, there was none. I'm not kidding. There was the kind of "difficulty" I typically experience on a Tuesday or Wednesday, where, OK, I don't know something at first glance, but then I get some crosses and I do. Basic stuff. Nothing to make you sweat. I did make one huge and (to me) funny mistake, right up front. With LAGU- in place, I looked at 3D: Heineken subsidiary whose name means "small bodies of water" and wrote in ... [drum roll] ... LAGUVULIN! Why Heineken would own a famous brand of Scotch, I don't know, but ... seemed plausible. But first of all, it turns out it's spelled LAGAVULIN (close!), and second of all, it's just wrong. I don't drink beer anymore, but I've had a few LAGUNITAS in my day. So I was able to see my mistake with no real trouble. Yes, makes much more sense that a Heineken subsidiary would be a beer, not a Scotch. Beer-to-beer parallel makes sense. But I was briefly thrilled to see LAGAVULIN, which has never appeared in the NYTXW. Amazing that I had LAGU- in place, was familiar with the beer brand LAGUNITAS, and still managed to botch the answer. Such is the power of whisky. 🥃 

Bullets:

• 19A: One of the two Boolean values, in programming (TRUE) — outside my field of knowledge. Never learned Boolean algebra and know little about "programming." In fact the only time I see "Boolean" is in crossword clues, which led me to believe it involved conjunctions like OR and NOR, am I making this up? Nope, I am not "Boolean algebra uses logical operators such as conjunction (and) denoted as ∧, disjunction (or) denoted as ∨, and negation (not) denoted as ¬. Elementary algebra, on the other hand, uses arithmetic operators such as addition, multiplication, subtraction, and division." (wikipedia).
• 20A: Disney princess whose name is one letter off from a common princess accessory (TIANA) — got this easily, from "Disney princess" alone, but was kind of startled when I eventually read the entire clue for the first time. This is because I didn't read the entire clue. I somehow missed the last word. So I thought it said [Disney princess whose name is one letter off from a common princess], which made me think "well that's a rude way to talk about DIANA."
• 32A: Benefactor with a limited number of grants? (GENIE) — this clue got a legit chuckle out of me. Nice one. Also good: 47A: Tea traders? (YENTAS). "Tea" = gossip.
• 65A: Mexican street food typically served with cheese, chili and lime (ELOTE) — a follow-up to yesterday's foodfest, and a nice complement to yesterday's AREPA—both ELOTE and AREPA are destined for crossword immortality. Neo-crosswordese ... but not as bad as most crosswordese because delicious. Deliciousness goes a long way.
• 36D: "In da Club" rapper (FIFTY CENT) — there's a long tradition of writing numbers out like this (i.e. representing US 1 as USONE), but in the case of 50 Cent it feels very off. It's always "50" as far as I can tell. Feels almost like the puzzle is misnaming him here. Also, I'm suddenly fascinated by conventions of capitalization as they relate to the article "da." Like, yes, it's the equivalent of "the," which you don't capitalize in titles, so the lowercase "da" makes sense here. And yet it looks insane to my eye. That little "da" really wants punching up. It wants to be a big "Da." And in some spellings of "In Da Club," it is big. But not in others. Wikipedia can't make up its mind. It's got lowercase in the title of the "In da Club" page, but it uses "In Da Club" throughout. 50 Cent has been on my mind far more than usual of late because of this bit from comedian Josh Johnson, all about how 50 was one of the producers of the recent (damning) documentary about Diddy (i.e. Sean Combs):

• 49D: Like the Coronation Chair in Westminster Abbey (OAKEN) — I was like "... HIGH?" Which would've made it a high chair, which, admittedly, would be a weird thing to get coronated in (unless you're a baby). Seriously, though, what's the difference between OAKEN and just ... OAK? Like, you never hear about wooden things being BIRCHEN, or MAPLEN, or YEWEN, but we have this adjective OAKEN. Why? All the other woods double as adjectives, but somehow OAK got a fancy little ending? I feel like poetry is to blame, somehow. I can't prove this, but ... it's gotta be poetry. Some poet was like "hmm, I wanna use 'oak,' but this line doesn't scan ... I need two syllables ... I've got it!"

That's all 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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