Titular Menotti opera character / SAT 10-30-21 / Princess Martell on Game of Thrones / Suffix with carboxyl / Together punny name for hardware store

Constructor: Michael Hawkins

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (or just Easy, not sure)

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: LA LIGA (32A: What Real Madrid and F.C. Barcelona play in) —

The Campeonato Nacional de Liga de Primera División, commonly known simply as Primera División (Spanish Premier League) in Spain, and as La Liga in English-speaking countries and officially as LaLiga Santander for sponsorship reasons, stylized as LaLiga, is the men's top professional football division of the Spanish football league system. Administered by the Liga Nacional de Fútbol Profesional, is contested by 20 teams, with the three lowest-placed teams at the end of each season relegated to the Segunda División and replaced by the top two teams and a play-off winner in that division. [...] According to UEFA's league coefficient rankings, La Liga has been the top league in Europe in each of the seven years from 2013 to 2019 (calculated using accumulated figures from five preceding seasons) and has led Europe for 22 of the 60 ranked years up to 2019, more than any other country. It has also produced the continent's top-rated club more times (22) than any other league in that period, more than double that of second-placed Serie A (Italy), including the top club in 10 of the 11 seasons between 2009 and 2019; each of these pinnacles was achieved by either Barcelona or Real Madrid. La Liga clubs have won the most UEFA Champions League (18), UEFA Europa League (13), UEFA Super Cup (15), and FIFA Club World Cup (7) titles, and its players have accumulated the highest number of Ballon d'Or awards (23), The Best FIFA Men's Player awards including FIFA World Player of the Year (19), and UEFA Men's Player of the Year awards including UEFA Club Footballer of the Year (11). (wikipedia)

• • •

I wish I hadn't finished up in the worst section (the greater SW), because the majority of this puzzle was a treat (not a trick; happy Halloween Eve, aka Devil's Night, everyone). Wrote in VOCAB straight away, and once again, nailing the 1-Across answer at first look was a harbinger of the puzzle's overall easiness. Then the longer fill started to come in up there and I could tell the puzzle was going to be not only easy, but entertaining. The longer fill really works up there: sometimes I feel like a sizable number of my students are just IVORY TOWER SEAT FILLERs (jk, kids, love ya), so I really liked that stack, and then the longer answers just flow out of there into the heart of the puzzle, which I HEARTED as well (nice bit of contemporary fill there, for sure). "DON'T WAIT UP" alongside DATE NIGHTS is genuinely exquisite. As good a pair of adjacent 10s as you're ever likely to see. Also, I've never been so happy to see a SOLECISM in all my life (6D: Grammatical mistake). I don't use that word in my teaching life, but I certainly encounter that phenomenon, and it was very nice to get a "hey, I know that word!" free pass in the middle of a Saturday puzzle. Speaking of my teaching life, not sure about the clue on "'TIS A PITY" (15D: "Alas!"). "Alas" is only semi-archaic, whereas "'TIS A PITY" is ultra-archaic, in the sense that no one would say that unironically now, whereas I can at least imagine an unironic "Alas!"). I think "Alas!" could just as easily clue "PITY..." as just a kind of stand-alone sighing expression. The 'TIS part of the answer needs something more strongly and specifically archaic to clue it. "Forsooth, how lamentable" or [Quaint expression of regret] or something like that. I think I'm just mad that the clue wasn't ["She's a Whore" preceder], but that ... probably wouldn't have played well, as most people have very likely never heard of that Caroline-era play (also, the title of that play is actually "'Tis Pity (not ''TIS *A* PITY') She's a Whore" so my dream clue wouldn't have worked at all, alas): 

Where I ended up was not so pleasant. Sadly, I did not know LUMPFISH. Also, it's not exactly the most ... mellifluous name for a foodstuff, so LUMP really landed in my lap like a LUMP of oatmeal (or ... fish, I guess), so bah (30A: Source of cheap caviar). ALB was a ghost of crosswordese past, for sure (33A: Clerical garment), joining -ASE and, eventually, ELIA in a mercifully small group of bygone blecch. Speaking of ELIA, what did I say (literally, just yesterday) about lazily trawling the waters of "G.O.T." fandom for absurd names to stick in your grid? (52A: Princess ___ Martell on "Game of Thrones"). It's "prestige TV," and now bygone prestige TV at that. More people watched a random 6th-season episode of "The Big Bang Theory" than watched any full season of "G.O.T." There's something ickily exclusionary about imagining that that show's character slate can be mined as deeply as it's currently being mined. You can (probably) do better than this, constructors. Also, SANSA (from yesterday) at least has the virtue of being original. ELIA is just the oldest of old-school crosswordese dressed up in a bad and probably highly flammable pseudo-medieval get-up from Spirit Halloween. ELIA is the pen name of Charles Lamb, or it's a Kazan, and that's all that it is. Just embrace the crosswordese you need to make the grid work, give it an unimposing familiar clue, so as Not To Call Attention To It, and move on. Sometimes, you need crosswordese; we all know and accept that. Like, AMAHL. I know AMAHL exclusively, solely, in no other way but from crosswords. I'd never have heard of "AMAHL and the Night Visitors" if not for crosswords. So the puzzle and I have an unspoken agreement that it will just hand me AMAHL with a gimme clue and I, in return, won't complain about it. It's nice that way. If AMAHL ever tries to come at me dressed up as [Dothraki hairstylist beheaded by Daenerys for getting her bangs wrong in Season 3 of "Game of Thrones"] or whatever, we're gonna have words.

Six more things:

• 26D: Walking (AMBULATION) — pfffffft. Another reason I wasn't too fond of the SW. I had AMBULATORY, a word that means you are up and [Walking], and (bonus!) a word that a person might actually use.
• 44A: You can't leave home with it (BASEBALL BAT) — oh, can't you? Bartolo Colón has some thoughts:

Also, more successfully, two years ago: Bregman / Soto:

 

• 3D: Outer layer (COAT) — simple enough, but initially I wanted IVORY TOWER to be IVY-something, so I had a "Y" where an "O" should be, so I wrote in CYST here (?!).
• 8D: Snickers piece? (TEE-HEE) — OH LOOK, THEY *DO* KNOW HOW TO SPELL IT!. All TEHEEs are hereby banned from Crossworld in perpetuity, the once and future laugh syllables having taken their rightful place in the grid.
• 32D: Loser to "The Shape of Water" for Best Picture ("LADY BIRD") — had the "LA-," wrote in "LA LA LAND" (which a. won, not lost***, and b. won in an earlier year from "The Shape of Water"; the clue phrasing here is awkward, and, as a "LADY BIRD" fan, I would argue, disrespectful—better to mention Laurie Metcalf's Oscar nomination than to clue the film as a "Loser," come on)
• 7D: ___ Together (punny name for a hardware store) (AWL) — OK, you got me. I legit laughed out loud at this one. Now, I was laughing while thinking "I cannot believe how ****ing stupid that is," but a laugh is a laugh, This clue is super dumb, which is precisely what all crossword clue puns should be: *super* dumb. Mere groaners can get lost. I require pure idiocy.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

***this is wrong. "LA LA LAND" la la lost (to "Moonlight"), though it was *announced* as the winner at the awards ceremony

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Pseudonymous children's author Hunter / FRI 8-13-21 / Bit of metal texturing / Father of Hecate

Constructor: John Guzzetta and Michael Hawkins

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (??? ... still jetlagged)

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: HAPTICS (9D: Study of touch, as with smartphone screens) —

1: the use of electronically or mechanically generated movement that a user experiences through the sense of touch as part of an interface (as on a gaming console or smartphone) (merriam-webster.com)

• • •

Hello, everyone. I am back from my family vacation. Families vacation, actually, as I spent the first part with my dad and that side of the family in San Diego, and the latter part in Colorado with my mom and sister (my sister was also in San Diego ... we have the same parents, it turns out ... it's 5 in the morning and I'm still on western time and I haven't written a sentence on a standard-sized keyboard in almost two weeks, so today's write-up might be a little bumpy). The vacation was wonderful and terrible in equal measure. It started with a positive COVID test for one of the thirteen people staying in our San Diego vacation home, so that was terrible, obviously. She was vaccinated, but she had also been in Tennessee :( so ... honestly, the vaccine can do a lot, but apparently it's only so effective against Tennessee (as of today, only 39.8% of the population fully vaccinated, compared to 58.1% in New York and 64.6% in Massachusetts, way to go, folks!). Good news: since the COVID-positive person was vaccinated, she got better *fast*—one day she was in bed all day, the next, she was up and surprisingly chipper and ready to drive herself half the length of California, back to her own home and bed. She was sick sick no more than 48 hours. But anyway, we were all exposed in maskless situations inside the house (and cars), for sure, so we all had several days of waiting before we could get reliably tested, but good news again—all the other twelve people in the vacation house came back negative (all vaccinated, of course). So the vacation started terrible, but honestly, it could've been so much worse. The vaccine was the difference between inconvenience and disaster. And the rest of the trip was mostly great. We left San Diego early and drove to Colorado, in order to get out of a potential sick house. So we got a bonus trip to Santa Fe out of the deal, which was pretty sweet. Colorado itself, always gorgeous. Possible future home for us. We'll see. Anyway, I hadn't seen my parents for two years, so I'm really glad I took care of that.

Speaking of disaster: the NYTXW stopped offering the puzzle in .puz format, which means you can no longer solve on 3rd-party apps (off-line), so I have to solve on the truly awful website interface from now on. Ugh. I get that the .puz format is outdated and limited, but it's also industry standard, and until you develop a new standard (you're the NYT, you roll around in crossword money, why Don't you develop that?), .puz is the format a lot of solvers use (with software like AcrossLite or, in my case, Black Ink). But now for the NYTXW I have to go in and fix all the settings so the cursor moves correctly (-ish), and the stupid music doesn't play and the timer goes away and the puzzle doesn't do the little "halfway!" cheer (actually, not sure if I can disable that; will investigate). If you always use the app or always solve on paper then none of this will mean much to you, and that's fine, but you probably also shouldn't have much of an opinion about it, since you can't know how it affects others. I won't go on much now, as I am bleary and still haven't gotten to today's puzzle, but I'm cynical about this decision. It's a business decision, not a puzzle-quality decision. It's about keeping everything in-house, including solving data. There were definitely things that .puz files couldn't do, visually, that the app can—the fancy tech-enabled flourishes that paper solvers will (blissfully) never experience, where certain answers light up or boxes change sizes at the end or whatever. But these flourishes occur in a small minority of puzzles. Most puzzles are still (and will likely continue to be) the same as they ever were. And  as a user experience, the NYT app / website is decidedly Not an improvement (if it were, I'd've been using it already). So now I'm forced to solve in their proprietary environment. And I can't even print out a finished puzzle. I can print out a finished grid (just the grid!?!?!?!) but not the finished puzzle with clues and all. If I can do the former, I should be able to do the latter. Also, if I'm on a word, say SOIREE, and my cursor is on the already-filled-in "S," and I've got SOIR- in place, there is no way to jump directly to the next empty square. If I (re-)type in "S," the cursor should jump to the next empty square, but it won't. I can get it to jump filled squares if I am already in a *blank* square, but if I'm in a filled square, followed by other filled squares, it Will Not Jump Them. This may seem like a teeny detail to you, but oof, when you're used to a more sensible and responsive interface, it's a super-annoying little hiccup. But this is the way the world is, for now. I'll adapt. But again, don't let anyone tell you this is for the betterment of puzzles. This is about control and, ultimately, as with all business-driven decisions, profit. If they wanted to make a genuine, substantial change, one that would really revolutionize crosswords ... well, let's just say that the .puz format is not the thing they'd get rid of.

This puzzle seems fine. Took me forever to solve because of the total unfamiliarity of the solving interface. I think I'll be printing the puzzle and solving by hand now, which will be slower, but I'm fast, so ... I can take the extra minute or two if it means not having to argue with the dumb website software. I especially like today's NW corner, which was very hard for me, with STAR TURN being the only longish answer I could get for a while. ROAST and NOTE (with same clue), both slow to come. SOWS and ABIT, both weirdly hard for me. And I had HMM before UHH, which, as mistakes go, is somehow on the more depressing end of the spectrum (6D: [Thinking ...]). No one likes misguessing, but misguessing moans or grunts or other non-words with indeterminate spellings always leaves a particularly bad aftertaste. Nothing in the rest of the grid is as sparkly as the NW, though SHOESTRING CATCH is fairly dazzling (in American football, it's a catch you make somewhere around the altitude of your shoestrings, i.e. a catch you barely make, often athletically impressive and visually spectacular). 

That SARAN clue is old as the hills, please retire it (51A: That's a wrap!). Also, retire KNURL, as no word that ugly should exist out of whatever professional context gave birth to it. Back to the limited scope of your argot, KNURL! (36A: Bit of metal texturing). Only word that threw me for real was HAPTICS, which feels like a word I know, but ... well, it isn't. I've probably seen it. It's got a familiar face. But it sounds like a lot of things, like OPTICS and TRIPTIKS (remember those!?... the maps of your planned travel routes that you'd get AAA to prepare for you, before GPS / phones took over!? ... good times) (oh, looks like they still exist, but they're just not, you know, paper). Oh, I have to admit that I don't really know who PERSES is. I know the add-a-U version, i.e. PERSEUS, but PERSES ... no (60A: Father of Hecate). He's a Titan who is noteworthy solely for fathering Hecate. I think MAV / VERSES beats MAP / PERSES (the combo with the obscurity should always lose), but I guess someone really wanted that SEA / MAP cross-reference for some reason, so ... here we are. THC / CAGER is also noteworthy for not being something simpler (i.e. THE / EAGER), but in that case, I think the "C" is probably the better choice, if only because it gives a little nod to the classic crosswordese CAGER (31D: Baller, in old lingo). I like the idea of CAGER as this old dude just sitting off in the corner, getting high, remembering the old days ... "You should seen some of the sh** ASTA would get up to, man ..."

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. A MEET-CUTE is a convention of romantic comedies, describing the initial meeting of the couple involved. (59A: When Harry first shared a ride with Sally, e.g.)

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G.I. pal of Forrest Gump / FRI 7-23-21 / Crystal gazer's lead-in / Classic hit that begins My friends feel it's their appointed duty / Elusive thing for a popular show / Oversize letter at the beginning of a chapter

Constructor: Michael Hawkins

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: HOBART (41A: Tasmania's capital) —

Hobart (/ˈhoʊbɑːrt/ [...] is the capital and most populous city of the Australian island state of Tasmania. Home to almost half of all Tasmanians, it is the least populated Australian state capital city, and second smallest if territories are taken into account, after Darwin, Northern Territory. Hobart is located in Tasmania's south-east on the estuary of the River Derwent, making it the most southern of Australia's capital cities. Its skyline is dominated by the 1,271-metre (4,170 ft) kunanyi/Mount Wellington, and its harbour forms the second-deepest natural port in the world, with much of the city's waterfront consisting of reclaimed land. The metropolitan area is often referred to as Greater Hobart, to differentiate it from the City of Hobart, one of the five local government areas that cover the city. It has a mild maritime climate. [...] Founded in 1804 as a British penal colony, Hobart is Australia's second oldest capital city after Sydney, New South Wales. Whaling quickly emerged as a major industry in the area, and for a time Hobart served as the Southern Ocean's main whaling port. Penal transportation ended in the 1850s, after which the city experienced periods of growth and decline. The early 20th century saw an economic boom on the back of mining, agriculture and other primary industries, and the loss of men who served in the world wars was counteracted by an influx of immigration. Despite the rise in migration from Asia and other non-English speaking regions, Hobart's population remains predominantly ethnically Anglo-Celtic, and has the highest percentage of Australian-born residents among Australia's capital cities. (wikipedia)

• • •

Maybe this would've flowed more nicely if I'd been able to mentally process 15A: Country without an official army, navy or air force (COSTA RICA). I thought the clue wanted a general term for such a country ... not an actual country. If the clue had had "Central American" in it or really anything in it to specify that a specific country was in play, I would've gotten it easily. I've been to COSTA RICA, I know it has no army. But I figured there must be a general term. And since the only other things I could conjure up in that NW corner were CCED and DAMUP and ERE (and I was not at all sure of those first two), this thing opened feeling sluggish, Saturdayish, meh. Jumped over to the NE where I read a bunch more clues I didn't know before seeing NOIRE and then getting ERASE TESS ISEE, and I was in business. Still, I never felt like I got a rhythm going in this one, never really felt like I hit a good patch. There was no thrill to this one. Bunch of solid stuff, but no real marquee answers. No wows. And it just didn't have bounce. This is a cluing voice problem that is, I'm sure, largely a matter of taste. Felt like it was trying to be hard in many places, but its idea of clever was rarely mine. That SNL clue, for instance, yeesh (10D: Letters that can fill in the blanks of "_A_D_ER" to make an appropriate surname). Poker slang? There's nothing I'd enjoy less, thanks (43A: TNT, in poker slang) (tbh, I didn't see this clue at all, so that's good). This puzzle wanted to Cliff Clavin me with trivia and tell me riddles and jokes out of a book and honestly I just want light and witty conversation, puzzle. 

[Maze runner] is a pretty good MINOTAUR clue. [Sixers in pro sports?] for TDS, also good. But a clue like the one for STAGE MOM feels like a swing and a miss (21D: One who knows the drama of raising children?)—I think of STAGE MOMs as ones who (***stereotypically***) create the (usually unnecessary) drama. Overbearing, overpresent, hovering, demanding. The term has a negative connotation that the clue doesn't catch. There is a difference between *knowing* the drama and *being* the drama. LAZY RIVER seems like a nice thing, but the water park (???) clue kills it. I got it easily enough, I guess, but LAZY RIVER just doesn't seem iconically water parky (admittedly, water parks are not places I would voluntarily go these days). Too often today (my beloved Friday!), I was either struggling to understand the clue or not really feeling the clue's whole vibe.

I liked RIDESHARE, though the "?" clue on it was deadening (12D: Pool service?). Big fan of DROPCAPs in general, and "NICE CATCH!" is probably the snazziest, most delightful thing in the grid. If it involved books, editing, poetry (METERED!) today, I was generally on board. I don't understand why the NE and SW corners are so weak in their short fill. Actually, what I don't understand is LTDAN and YENTE, the one a secondary character from a movie I've tried really hard to forget for the past quarter century, the other ... honestly, I just don't understand the spelling, I think. It's enough for me to keep YENTL and YENTA straight, but I've got YENTE too? (she's a character in "Fiddler on the Roof"). Looks like YENTA and YENTE are girl's names, YENTL is a girl *or* boy's name (as well as a Barbra Streisand movie), and YENTA is the only one of those that has become a regular English loan word (meaning, roughly, "busybody" or "gossip"). Anyway, if you needed YENTE in your grid, sure, you could use YENTE, but under SIDEA and SLIER, with that ambiguous last vowel, it just doesn't liven things up much. It just felt so anticlimactic to end down there, to have the last thing you fill in be ARE (60D: =) because you were not sure of the last vowel in YENTE, which is itself buried under a pile of overfamiliar stuff. When the highlights of a puzzle are very high, when it crackles and sizzles, swoops and spins, I tend not to notice little problems with the 4s and the 5s. But today, my brain didn't have those highs to enjoy, so it found something else to gnaw on. The Friday bar is So High now that there are close to half a dozen constructors I can name off the top of my head who routinely crush Fridays. Software plus the wordlist arms race means that putting together passable themeless grids isn't so hard any more. You need style, personality, verve. Computer power will get you to "serviceable." You need more. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. REMINDER: the Boswords Crossword Tournament is *this weekend* (July 25). Here's the announcement from tournament organizer John Lieb:

Registration is now open for the Boswords 2021 Summer Tournament, which will be held on Sunday, July 25. This event will be ONLINE only. Solvers can compete individually or in pairs. To register, to see the constructor roster, and for more details, go to www.boswords.org, where past tournament puzzles are also available for purchase.

A percentage of the proceeds goes to local Boston charities. There are cool constructors involved, like Malaika Handa and Wyna Liu. You should definitely check it out.

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Entry point in the walls of Babylon / SAT 3-27-21 / Singer with supporting role in 2019's Hustlers / Carrier based near Kuala Lumpur / Onetime name in weight-loss supplements / Divisor in the golden ratio / Six-time WNBA All-Star Moore / Eponym of an NYC cathedral

Constructor: Michael Hawkins

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: "Caligula" by CAMUS (35A: "Caligula" writer) —

Caligula is a play written by Albert Camus, begun in 1938 (the date of the first manuscript 1939) and published for the first time in May 1944 by Éditions Gallimard. The play was later the subject of numerous revisions. It was part of what the author called the "Cycle of the Absurd", with the novel The Stranger (1942) and the essay The Myth of Sisyphus (1942). A number of critics have reported the piece to be existentialist; however, Camus always denied belonging to this philosophy.^[3] Its plot revolves around the historical figure of Caligula, a Roman Emperor famed for his cruelty and seemingly insane behavior.

• • •

A slight step up from yesterday's puzzle. The grid is just a shade more interesting overall, and there are somewhat more top-notch answers (for me, BIG ASK, FAR FROM IT, "THAT'S ON YOU," and BACK FOR MORE ... though now that I look at those, they don't exactly sizzle, but I do think they're very good). It was very Saturdayish and I moved through it in very Saturdayish fashion, i.e. somewhat more ploddingly than Friday, but steadily and without significant slow-down. Very much not a fan of Marvel movies or weight-loss supplements, so at least a couple of the puzzle's marquee answers left me cold and somewhat squinch-faced, but overall, it worked fine. The one truly unusual answer (to me) was ISHTAR GATE (53A: Entry point in the walls of Babylon), which I've never heard of, and which really truly sounds like it wants to be ISHTAR'S something. ISHTAR wants to be possessive. ISHTAR GATE sounds like a scifi TV series, a probably very ill-advised space-opera mash-up of Elaine May's most notorious movie flop and the TV show "Stargate." Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman flying on spaceships and going through wormholes and, I dunno, solving space crimes or something. Luckily the short answers in the SE were well known to me, so I worked the ISHTAR answer out, but there were a harrowing few seconds there. Probably the worst "mistake" I made in the puzzle was beating myself for not knowing the Roman author CAMUS (pronounced, in my head, CAY'-mus) :( Did not dawn on me until I went to look his name up that CAMUS was the very famous 20th-century French writer Albert CAMUS (pronounced ka-MOO'). Caligula was Roman, CAMUS looks Roman, I had no idea the playwright wrote such a play ... and there you are: literary humiliation.

Had SUPPOSE before SURMISE (24D: Reckon). Managed to scrounge up PICAROS despite not being at all sure that it was a word. I know that there is a literary genre called the "picaresque" which involves dudes going on a series of adventures, so I thought, "hey, maybe those dudes are [Rogues]?" And there it was, PICAROS. While ISHTAR GATE was the answer I was least familiar with, the answer I struggled *most* with was actually CAMERA SHY. I did not have the "A" from CAMUS (because I still thought that the Roman (!?) author might at that point be someone named COMUS), so I looked at the obviously tricky clue, 31D: Out of the picture, say, and I looked at the answer boxes, C-MER-SHY, and wow I have no idea how I didn't see CAMERA SHY at that point, but I didn't. I sincerely believe I was unconsciously slotting an "O" in that second position, and so kept seeing COME as the first word in the phrase. Also probably wanted to make one word out of that answer, but COMERISHY ... not a word. OK, that's all, good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Trading card franchise that's an alternative to Pokémon / SAT 8-29-20 / Muppet song with nonsense lyrics / Outburst from Sneezy / Haydee to Count of Monte Cristo

Constructor: Michael Hawkins

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (5:49)

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: YU-GI-OH! (8D: Trading card franchise that's an alternative to Pokémon) —

Yu-Gi-Oh! (Japanese: 遊☆戯☆王, Hepburn: Yū-Gi-Ō!, lit. "King of Games") is a Japanese manga series about gaming written and illustrated by Kazuki Takahashi. It was serialized in Shueisha's Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine between September 1996 and March 2004. The plot follows the story of a boy named Yugi Mutou, who solves the ancient Millennium Puzzle. Yugi awakens a gambling alter-ego within his body that solves his conflicts using various games.

Two anime adaptations were produced; one by Toei Animation, which aired from April to October 1998, and another produced by NAS and animated by Studio Gallop titled Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters, which aired between April 2000 and September 2004. The manga series has spawned a media franchise that includes multiple spin-off manga and anime series, a trading card game, and numerous video games. Most of the incarnations of the franchise involve the fictional trading card game known as Duel Monsters, where each player uses cards to "duel" each other in a mock battle of fantasy "monsters". This forms the basis for the real life Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game. Yu-Gi-Oh has become one of the highest-grossing media franchises of all time. (wikipedia) 

• • •

Sat down to solve this puzzle just as the news was breaking that actor Chadwick Boseman ("Black Panther") had died, very young (mid-40s), after a four-year battle with colon cancer. He was a tremendous actor (see "Da 5 Bloods" if you haven't already), and I'm just gutted. Like, the world is a lot to take generally these days, so the loss of someone so talented, someone who played iconic, transformative Black figures (James Brown, Jackie Robinson) as well as the Black superhero, on top of all this mess ... it's truly awful. "Black Panther" was the only movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe that I really loved, and he had a lot to do with that. He was an important, powerful, inspiring figure in popular culture these past few years, and his death is both surprising and deeply saddening. So please forgive the rather brief write-up today—I'm feeling a little too deflated to do my usual song and dance. 

I enjoyed this puzzle, actually. It's true that some of that enjoyment came from the bizarre mind-meld I had with the puzzle. Most of my initial guesses ended up being right, which, on Saturdays, is rarely the case. So much so that I don't trust most of my initial guesses on Saturday. I am tentative about writing things in. I verify with crosses. But from AMIE to CAV to CHINOOK to CHUM, first guesses were right. I sincerely didn't know CHINOOK were anything but a kind of salmon, but I had the -OK and I know those salmon are from the "Pacific Northwest," so I went with it. Seems a bit ... denigrating? ... that when you google [Chinook] the first hits you get are for a helicopter and a dog breed. Seems like maybe the actual people should be near the top. Anyway, being on this puzzle's wavelength, and then just getting a few choice gimmes handed to me (YU-GI-OH, DIDION, CHOPRA, CINDY), really helped me move through this one quickly. The long answers in this one are generally bright and fun, which is all I ask from my themelesses. I finished this faster and liked it better than yesterday's puzzle. HEADFAKE over USVSTHEM was probably my favorite moment, and it's hard not to be cheered by "MAHNA MAHNA!" (12D: Muppets song with nonsense lyrics)

I did the thing where I drilled down the Downs in the NW as fast as I could, with the first answer I could think of. Did the first six and got three right ... and that was enough. One of my wrong answers was actually right, I just wrote it in the wrong was (CSU instead of CAL), and then I left one blank (5D: Expression of doubt = OR NOT) and I wrote in ALOT instead of HEAP, but even with the static from the wrong answers, I could see AFTERYOU, which made me know exactly which answers were wrong, and I sped away from there. Not a fan of the extra (first) "H" in AHCHOO. Hate the *concept* of the SIDEHUSTLE, but I think it's actually pretty good as fill. Last letter in was the "V" in INVADE, which was (strangely) the hardest answer in the puzzle for me. I think of a "blitz" as an invasion, sure, but I don't think I'd ever substitute "blitz" for the *verb* INVADE. But that's a quibble. Overall, I liked this fine. I'm done. Take care.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Mammalian hematophage / SAT 7-18-20 / Do-or-die hockey situation / Actor Lane who voiced Mister Ed / Purchases at Ollivanders, in fantasy / Historic region of northern France / Predecessor of Outlook

Constructor: John Guzzetta and Michael Hawkins

Relative difficulty: Medium (8-ish?)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: PICARDY (42D: Historic region of northern France) —

A historical region of northern France [🙁] bordering on the English Channel. The name was first used in the 1200s for a number of small feudal holdings. Picardy was contested by France and England during the Hundred Years' War and became part of the French crown lands in 1477.

• • •

I psyched myself up before this one and really, actively tried to like it, and for a while, things were pretty OK, but then the eastern part of the puzzle happened and my good will got depleted fast. It annoys me no end when editorial cutesiness results in actually bad cluing. Like, you want to use [Kismet] twice ... why? What is cute or interesting about that? The only thing that leads to is a very misleading and totally inapt clue for LOTINLIFE, which is already super-dated-sounding and hard to parse. FATE, yes, great, I got that, but LOTINLIFE has a tonal quality that is so much more downbeat than the word "kismet" suggests. FATE can kinda swing either way, but "kismet" swings up and LOTINLIFE swings down. I can't imagine the former in a negative context on the latter in a positive one. That answer next to EVEN TENOR (ugh) was just brutal for me to put together. I had the EVEN and still no idea what was supposed to go after it. I blame ANT, which ... again, why are you so enamored of this "same clue for two answers" baloney. [Ones seeking table scraps, maybe] works great for PET DOGS, but for ANT, gah, stop, what are you doing? I mean, sure, ants will eat any food. You are being dishonest about the nature of the word "scrap" here with your stupid ANT clue.

Plié

DIP

A plié is a DIP since when? Those are drastically different dance terms. Yes, a plié involves bending the knees and thus, uh, lowering your torso, generally, but that ain't a DIP. I had PAS in there, which is at least a balletic term. DIP, shmip, my god. PICARDY I didn't know at all—"historic region" strikes me as pretty vague. Also pretty obscure. Hasn't been in the grid for *twenty-five years*. Speaking of stuff that hasn't been in the grid for over two decades: ODELET (36D: Short lyric poem) (last seen in 1998). Honestly, that answer is so dumb I couldn't believe it was real as I was writing it in. I have a Ph.D. in English and somehow missed the ODELET form entirely. It's so obscure and so phony that google refuses to believe I want information about it, insisting that I must have simply misspelled / typo'd the word "delete"; fitting, as I would like to "delete" ODELET from this grid (and all future grids)

I like the answer ELDERLAW because I like the show "Better Call Saul," and the main character, Jimmy McGill, works (memorably) in the field of ELDERLAW for a while (58A: Field with estate planning). Still, that was a hard answer for me to turn up. Same with WET. And CALF, ugh. FLOE and BERG fit there too (54A: Detached piece of ice). Wanted HAM-FISTED before HAM-HANDED (34D: All thumbs). Oh, really struggled with [Red cents?] for DEBT and [A, as in April?] for SCHEDULE. That [A, as in April?] clue is a bit of a thinker—SCHEDULE A is used for itemized deductions when you file your taxes, which are due in ... April. Man I wish I liked financial humor more. The puzzle played kinda old, with its watch FOBs and ODELETs and "ERI tu" and this ALLAN what's his name (49D: Actor Lane who voiced Mister Ed). This puzzle probably still uses HOTMAIL (11D: Predecessor of Outlook). There's some perfectly fine stuff in this grid, and YOU HAD TO BE THERE is a very nice centerpiece, but the offness of a few answers really interfered with the pleasurableness of the whole solve. I really expect the NYTXW themelesses to be better than just OK.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Ollivanders is not "in fantasy" (50A: Purchases at Ollivanders, in fantasy)—it's specifically in the Harry Potter universe. Own your J.K. Rowling content! "In fantasy" is a dodge.

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