Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle: Michael Garbus

Constructor: Adam Aaronson and Michael Garbus

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: VEGETARIAN (28D: Like the foods that answer the starred clues, despite how their names start) — fruits/vegetables that have an animal's name in them:

Theme answers:

HORSERADISH (20A: *Most "wasabi" at sushi bars, in actuality)
CRABAPPLE (23A: *Fruit whose name is also a synonym for a grouch)
GOOSEBERRY (26D: *Fruit from a bush, much used in pies and jams)
TIGER NUT (38D: *Little tuber used to make Spanish horchata)
CHICKPEA (39D: *Garbanzo, by another name)

Word of the Day: EARL Sweatshirt (60A: Rapper ___ Sweatshirt) —

Thebe Neruda Kgositsile (born February 24, 1994), known professionally as Earl Sweatshirt, is an American rapper and record producer. Kgositsile was originally known by the moniker Sly Tendencies when he began rapping in 2008, but changed his name when Tyler, the Creator invited him to join his alternative hip hop collective Odd Future in late 2009. He is the son of South African political poet Keorapetse Kgositsile.
At the age of 16, he gained recognition and critical praise for his second mixtape, Earl (2010). Shortly after its release, he was sent to a boarding school in Samoa for at-risk teens by his mother, which he attended for a year and a half. Unable to record during his stay, he returned to Los Angeles in February 2012 before his eighteenth birthday. Kgositsile rejoined Odd Future and adopted a recording contract with the group's parent label, Columbia Records to release his debut studio album, Doris (2013).
The album peaked within the top five of the Billboard 200, while his second and third albums, I Don't Like Shit, I Don't Go Outside (2015) and Some Rap Songs (2018), both peaked within the top 20; each received critical praise. He then signed with Warner Records to release his second EP, Feet of Clay (2019)^[3] and fourth studio album, Sick! (2022). His fifth album, Voir Dire (2023), was a collaborative project with record producer the Alchemist.

• • •

Love the concept but hate the revealer. By "hate" I mean ... not really "hate," but ... it just didn't work for me, for the simple fact that I would never refer to a fruit / vegetable as "VEGETARIAN." "VEGETARIAN" is an adjective for people (who don't eat meat) and dishes (that don't have meat in them). It's a qualifier. You would never have to qualify an apple, say, or a banana. Those are plants. There's no question but that they are appropriate for people who don't eat meat. I get that the main idea of this theme is that the names of the plants suggest (superficially) that they have animal components, so VEGETARIAN would then clarify things, but still ... I had VEGETABLES and VEGETATION (!) before I had VEGETARIAN, so absurd does the idea of calling a simple plant "VEGETARIAN" seem to me. I've also never heard of a TIGER NUT, though I have heard of horchata, and I have never had a GOOSEBERRY pie or jam, despite the clues assuring me that the fruit is "much used" for those purposes. The end of VEGETARIAN, the front of GOOSEBERRY, and all of TIGER NUT—that was the extent of my troubles today. Everything else went in instantly, easier than a Monday. It's a pretty vibrant grid, despite a preponderance of 3-4-5's, and it's got interesting-looking mirror symmetry. I like all the mid-range fill in the center, particularly the dreaded STOMACH PIRANHA! Hey, did you know that NIRVANA and PIRANHA have three letters in exactly the same place? You learn this type of stuff when you get real cavalier and just fill in answers based on pattern recognition without actually looking at the clue. Not Recommended. (fun when it works, but still, not recommended).

There are all kinds of answers today that are solidly 21st century, which is to say, they are going to be new to some people (despite having been in the puzzle before). Not living in a city with a lot of street food, I definitely learned what ELOTE was from crosswords (maybe a decade ago?). Whereas I only learned what "NO CAP" means about a year or two ago, probably also from crosswords (though not the New York Times). I remember very clearly asking my students about "NO CAP" and their confirming that it was a thing (and kinda laughing at said "thing" coming out of their middle-aged professor's mouth). I've probably written about "NO CAP" before ... oh yeah, here we go: CAP (as "lie") was a Word of the Day just last year. "NO CAP"'s first appearance as an answer only occurred two years ago, though, so if you haven't fully absorbed that bit of slang yet, that's understandable. But you should absorb it now. As for EARL Sweatshirt ... that's the name I expect to baffle more NYTXW solvers than any other today. This is actually the fourth appearance of this exact clue ([Rapper ___ Sweatshirt]), but the first appearance, was only in three years ago, so again, I think there will still be a lot of solver who don't know him and haven't assimilated him into their crossword vocabularies yet. Unlike NO CAP and ELOTE, EARL Sweatshirt didn't come to me from crosswords. I'd heard his music a bunch of times. He's great. I even bought a cassette (you heard me!) of his latest album (Voir Dire, a collab. with the Alchemist) just last year.

Bullet points:

54D: Muppet who posts on social media in the third person (ELMO) — "posts on social media"?? He just speaks that way generally, doesn't he? "Posts on social media" is a weird / odd attempt to sound "current." Holy (ca)moly, this Muppet wiki has catalogued Every Single Instance in which ELMO has (anomalously) used the first person, not only on the show (Sesame Street), but in all merch (!) (direct-to-video specials, CD-ROM games from the '90s, etc.). This is what we call the "good internet." Exhaustively nerdy lists designed solely for obsessive fans—this is why the Internet was invented.
38D: *Little tuber used to make Spanish horchata (TIGER NUT) — I was confused by "Spanish" horchata. Is that different from regular "horchata," I wondered? Well, turns out horchata is originally Spanish, made of soaked, ground, and sweetened TIGER NUTs, but in some parts of the Americas, "it is known as an agua fresca, and the base can be either jicaro (morro), rice, melon seeds, sesame seeds, along with various spices" (wikipedia).

51A: Electronically produced echo effect (REVERB) — some of that cool mid-range fill I was talking about. Liked this one.
53A: "Fine, I guess" ("OK, SURE") — liked this mid-range fill a whole lot less, in that the "OK" part seems totally arbitrary. "OH" "UH" "UM" all feel like they could work. I think I was an "UH" man myself. "UH" sounds less sure than "OK," and the clue seemed to be indicating some hesitancy or uncertainty.
23A: Fruit whose name is also a synonym for a grouch (CRABAPPLE) — "Crab" is a synonym for a grouch all on its own. Not sure why you'd tack "apple" on to it.
2D: 1985 Kurosawa epic that is a retelling of "King Lear" (RAN) — our "local" (Ithaca) independent movie theater has a promotional video they show before movies that talks about the history of the theater, and apparently the first movie they ever screened, back in the mid-80s, was RAN. RAN was also the first Kurosawa movie I ever saw. It's been a while. I should rewatch. Speaking of great Japanese directors, I watched Ozu's Tokyo Story for the first time just last night—a beautiful film that had me wondering, once again, how in the world OZU has never appeared in the NYTXW—Tokyo Story was voted the Greatest Film Of All Time in the 2012 Sight + Sound directors poll ... that's got to be enough to get you in the crossword, come on.