First Eurodance hit in the U.S. / SUN 11-30-25 / Gay rights activist Marsha P. Johnson, for one / Noodling in a jazz tune / Anti-mob law acronym / John who painted “Backyards, Greenwich Village" / Mantou or bao, in Chinese cuisine / Noodling in a jazz tune / Diamonds can sometimes be found in them / 2022 sequel to "Knives Out" / Former Portuguese colony on the Malabar Coast / Historical Dutch settler / Ancient drinker of the fermented beverage chicha / 1999 Ron Howard film about a reality show

Constructor: Natan Last

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: "Hog Wild" — the grid illustrates the biblical idiom PEARLS BEFORE / SWINE (16D: With 87-Down, idiom about wasting one's efforts ... as seen in four columns in this puzzle?); words that can follow "pearl" in familiar phrases / names appear inside little pearl-shaped figures (i.e. circles), and each string of "pearls" is directly above ("before") a famous pig (or "swine"):

Theme answers ("pearls" are in BLUE, "swine" are in PINK):

• "PUMP UP THE JAM" / PORKY (12D: First Eurodance hit in the U.S. (1989) / 83D: "Th-th-th-that's all, folks!" speaker)
• GLASS ONION / HAMM (28D: 2022 sequel to "Knives Out" / 91D: Pink character in the "Toy Story" movies)
• PASS THE BUCK / WILBUR (6D: Skirt responsibility / 77D: Literary runt of the litter)
• SAFE HARBOR / BABE (31D: Refuge / 94D: Farmer Hoggett's entrant in a sheepherding contest)

Word of the Day: Paramore (84A: Grammy-winning Paramore hit of 2014 = "AIN'T IT FUN") —

Paramore is an American rock band formed in Franklin, Tennessee, in 2004. Since 2017, the band's lineup includes lead vocalist Hayley Williams, lead guitarist Taylor York, and drummer Zac Farro. Williams and Farro are founding members of the group, while York, a high school friend of the original lineup, joined in 2007. [...] The band's second album, Riot! (2007) became a mainstream success thanks to the success of the singles "Misery Business", "Crushcrushcrush", and "That's What You Get". The album was certified Platinum in the US and the band received a Best New Artist nomination at the 2008 Grammy Awards. Their 2009 follow-up, Brand New Eyes, reached number two on the Billboard 200 and became the band's second-highest-charting album to date. It produced the top-forty single "The Only Exception" and went platinum in Ireland and the UK. // Following the departure of Zac and Josh Farro in 2010, the band released their self-titled fourth album in 2013. Paramore gave the band their first number one album on the US Billboard 200 and was also the number one album in the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Argentina and Mexico. It included the singles "Still Into You" and "Ain't It Fun", with the latter winning the Grammy Award for Best Rock Song for Williams and York as songwriters, making it Paramore's first Grammy win.

• • •

First things first. Today's constructor, Natan Last, has a brand new book out about—you guessed it—the mating habits of the white-breasted cormorant. JK, it's about the history of the crossword puzzle! It's called Across the Universe: The Past, Present, and Future of the Crossword Puzzle. I've read it and I love it and you should buy it. But don't just take my word for it ... actually, you should just take my word for it, but if somehow that's not enough, read a review. Like this one in the L.A. Times. It really is a wonderful tour through this world, our world, CrossWorld. Lots of familiar names, lots of charming anecdotes. Nice timing on this puzzle, Natan. Promotional synergy! Sell those books! (if I sound cynical, I'm not—it really is a good book that deserves to be read). Now on to the puzzle!

***

Well this is certainly the most conceptually interesting Sunday puzzle I've seen in a while. The only criticism I have of the theme is that these "pearls" are more "above" than they are "before" swine. Decidedly above. If you had to describe the spatial relationship here, it's over/under, not before/after. But if you call the lawyers in, I think they could get a judge to rule that "above" is a type of "before," especially since it's reasonably conventional to think of a puzzle "starting" at the top and "ending" at the bottom. You're likely to the get the "pearl" answers "before" you get the "swine" answer, so ... OK. Judges say "OK." Beyond that, the theme is beautifully executed, particularly the "pearl" part, with the conventional circled squares magically transformed into images of pearls by virtue of the theme, and with each pearl-strand spelling out a word that can follow the word / name "Pearl": the band Pearl Jam, the cocktail garnish pearl onion, the author Pearl (S.) Buck, and the poorly-reviewed 2001 blockbuster Pearl Harbor ("a two-hour movie squeezed into three hours" — Roger Ebert). The fictional "swine" are all famous, except maybe HAMM, whose name I didn't know. Not sure he's reached the iconic status of pigs like WILBUR, BABE, and PORKY. Poor Piglet, left on the bench. But symmetry is a harsh mistress, and today she called for a four-letter pig (to match BABE). And so in goes HAMM. Toy Story is famous enough for theme answer purposes, and even if I didn't know HAMM, at least I could infer his name, so ... fair. Nice job. And kudos for working "THAT'LL DO" into the grid. I got a big post-solve rush of happiness when I realized that the puzzle was winking at me there.

The puzzle stands out physically as well, as it has an absolutely bonkers grid layout. Is it supposed to resemble a pig's face? Again, I think if you call the lawyers in, they could argue at least semi-convincingly that I'm supposed to see a pig's face. That highly unusual middle section, with its colonnade of 11s drilling 7 rows down into a black void from which there is no escape, has something vaguely snouty about it. And the upside-down black "L"s at the top are kind of ear-y. I could be convinced, is all I'm saying. 

I didn't always love the fill. AN APPLE A DAY is creative, but a bit sad on its own. Partial adages, are we doing that now? Also, AN APPLE A DAY keeps the doctor away, which seems like a far more MODEST claim than "cure-all." Apples are good for you, they are part of a healthy diet, but they don't, as yet, make you immortal. How have I been a baseball fan for nigh on a half century and never heard the term LOUD OUTS (4D: Baseballs that are hard-hit but then caught, in lingo)? It's possible (probable?) that I have heard it and just didn't process what I was hearing, or that I have not heard it nearly enough for it to register as a familiar baseball phrase. I could've inferred the meaning from the phrase itself, but I needed a bunch of crosses to get it in there today. 

There are two long song titles that are likely to throw older solvers (or, in the case of "PUMP UP THE JAM," possibly younger solvers as well)—one of them threw me. I am very much in the demo for "PUMP UP THE JAM" and very much not in the demo for Paramore, a band whose name I hear way more often than I ever hear their music. If a band blew up between the year I finished my dissertation (1999) and the first Obama administration, there is a good chance I missed the boat entirely. Job / marriage / daughter / dogs / crossword blog / etc. had me far far less focused on pop culture than I had been in my teens and 20s. The '00s is also my biggest blind spot movie-wise. Paramore becomes popular at the tail end of this pop culture blackout period for me, but despite paying reasonably close attention to contemporary music in the intervening years, I still know only their name, not a one of their songs. But they are absolutely massive for a certain section of Millennials in particular, so they're certainly crossworthy. Still, it's weird that one of their song titles made it into the grid before they did. PARAMORE seems like it would be pretty useful as 8-letter answers go—so many common letters. And yet, to date, nothing. Except "AIN'T IT FUN." It did win a Grammy. But it's decidedly less famous than most songs you're apt to see in a puzzle.

If there are rough patches in the grid here and there, I think most of them are probably side effects of a structurally demanding grid. EDTV LORI "PUMP UP THE JAM" BACON (!) HANS is quite a name wad to choke down, esp. since it's conceivable that a solver wouldn't know any of the first three of those names. No one calls stadiums STADIA, so cluing it as if it were part of ordinary baseball usage feels ridiculous (20D: Diamonds can sometimes be found in them). Staying over there for a second (with our crossword friends ARAL and SIA), what is a John SLOAN!? (26D: John who painted 'Backyards, Greenwich Village"). Besides an answer designed to make me feel like an uncultured BOER (I mean "boor" ... possibly "bore")? Aha, the Ashcan school, yes [nods sagely] I've heard of that (I have heard of it, but like many things I've heard of—say, Paramore—know almost nothing about it). Here's the painting in question:

Kitty! John SLOAN is now my favorite p— holy crap is that Ronald McDonald's evil niece in the window? This painting is just full of surprises. Oh wait, there's a second kitty! And clown girl is eying him hungrily. Run kitties, run!

Bullets:

• 81A: Lethargy (SOPOR) — pfffffffft OK I associate SOPOR (when I'm forced to think about it at all, which is only when I'm solving crosswords) with "sleep." If something's "SOPORific," it is sleep-inducing. Every definition of SOPOR I'm seeing has the word "sleep" in it. "Lethargy," on the other hand, I associate with SOPOR's cousin, TORPOR, which literally means "lethargy." 

• 21A: Actress Zosia ___ of "Girls" (MAMET) — briefly but strongly wanted this answer to be RONAN. But that's not Zosia. That Saoirse. Zosia is a different actress entirely. Daughter of the playwright MAMET.
• 52A: College voter? (ELECTOR) — as in "the Electoral College."
• 74A: Mantou or bao, in Chinese cuisine (BUN) — "bao" is very familiar to me. "Mantou," that's new. Steamed BUN, no filling, popular in northern China.

• 100A: Noodling in a jazz tune (VAMPING) — not sure why "noodling" seems far too informal a substitute for VAMPING, but it does. Yes—here we go. From good ol' M-W herself (yeah, the dictionary's a "she," no, I will not be accepting questions): ": to improvise on an instrument in an informal or desultory manner." It's the "in an informal or desultory manner" part that makes it inapt to my ear.
• 28D: 2022 sequel to "Knives Out" (GLASS ONION) — going to see the sequel to this sequel today, up in Ithaca. Very excited. I could wait two weeks for it to come out on Netflix, but screw that. Big screen, baby!

• 54D: Anti-mob law acronym (RICO) — LOL I always thought it was named for some guy named RICO. But no, the RICO of "RICO Act" stands for "Racketeer Influenced (?) and Corrupt Organizations." Is "Racketeer Influenced" a compound adjective? If so, shouldn't it be hyphenated? So awkward, no wonder they just say "RICO."
• 78D: L'___ du Nord" (Minnesota motto) (ÉTOILE) — started rereading Simenon's first Maigret mystery, Pietr-le-Letton (Pietr the Latvian) yesterday (en français), and the whole first part of the story involves tracking the movement of a trans-European train called ... L'ÉTOILE-du-Nord!

OK, that's all. Now go buy Natan's book, or order it as a holiday gift for the aspiring cruciverbalist in your life. It's very good, and not just 'cause I'm (very briefly) in it.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P. S. this Tuesday, Dec. 2, Eli Selzer (who fills in for me here on the blog occasionally) will be on Jeopardy! Tune in to see how it goes!

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Perfume ecclesiastically / THU 1-23-25 / Classic line from the Dick and Jane series / Advocacy org. that gained prominence in 1980s New York City / Steamed dumpling in Tibetan cuisine / E, in a musical mnemonic / Land whose name meant "between two rivers" / Bee-dazzler? / Literary husband of Zeena Frome

Constructor: Natan Last and the J.A.S.A. Crossword Class

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: POTHOLES (56A: Obstacles for a driver ... or what this puzzle's circled squares represent) — four circled squares function as POTHOLES, i.e. they contain the word "POT," and they interrupt Down answers that mean "road"  (in the Across answers, the letters "POT" function normally):

  
Theme answers:

• RO[POT]AD / SEE SPOT RUN ((3D: Either of two diverging in a Robert Frost poem / 15A: Classic line from the Dick and Jane series)
• BO[POT]ULEVARD / NEPOTISM (9D: Sunset in the West? / 16A: Hiring practice at a family business, say)
• AVE[POT]NUE / MESOPOTAMIA (22D: Way / 32A: Land whose name meant "between two rivers")
• STRE[POT]ET / MAPO TOFU (38D: Word with clothes or cleaner / 55A: Sichuan bean curd dish)

Word of the Day: ACT UP (44A: Advocacy org. that gained prominence in 1980s New York City) —

AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) is an international, grassroots political group working to end the AIDS pandemic. The group works to improve the lives of people with AIDS through direct action, medical research, treatment and advocacy, and working to change legislation and public policies.

ACT UP was formed on March 12, 1987, at the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center in New York City. Co-founder Larry Kramer was asked to speak as part of a rotating speaker series, and his well-attended speech focused on action to fight AIDS. Kramer spoke out against the state of the Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC), which he perceived as politically impotent. Kramer had co-founded the GMHC but had resigned from its board of directors in 1983. According to Douglas Crimp, Kramer posed a question to the audience: "Do we want to start a new organization devoted to political action?" The answer was "a resounding yes." Approximately 300 people met two days later to form ACT UP.

At the Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, in October 1987, ACT UP New York made their debut on the national stage, as an active and visible presence in both the march, the main rally, and at the civil disobedience at the United States Supreme Court Building the following day. Inspired by this new approach to radical, direct action, other participants in these events returned home to multiple cities and formed local ACT UP chapters in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Rhode Island, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and other locations. ACT UP spread internationally. In many countries separate movements arose based on the American model. For example, the famous gay rights activist Rosa von Praunheim co-founded ACT UP in Germany. (wikipedia)

• • •

I thought this was a nifty little puzzle, with the one downside being that the revealer came as a huge anticlimax. You can see that those squares are "POTHOLES" as soon as figure out the rebus, which for me came at "SEE SPOT RUN." Once I saw that the cross was ROAD, and that the "POT" square disrupted ROAD (rather than being an actual part of the answer), I got it—the rebus squares are actual "POTHOLES." I don't know if it's possible to do the revealer any differently; that is, what else is it going to be but POTHOLES? But anyway, by the time I got to the bottom of the grid, POTHOLES was telling me something I already knew. Since the puzzle doesn't need a revealer in order to make sense of the theme, maybe there's some (as yet unconceived) answer out there that could have come at the concept obliquely. Something like BUMP IN THE ROAD (except not that, because "road" is already one of the answers). Anyway, POTHOLES felt superfluous. Like a sign saying "tree" next to a "tree." Like, yes, I see that that is a tree. That is obviously a tree. But leaving the problem of the revealer aside, the core concept here was lovely. Four different road types, all disrupted by "POT" holes. I love that "POT" doesn't work in the Downs. It's jarring, the way POTHOLES are jarring. And the "POT"s are all handled very nicely in the Acrosses. Those "POT" answers are all really interesting in their own right, and in none of them is "POT" actually a standlone word, i.e. the "POT" is well and truly "buried" in each answer (what I mean is that if one of the crosses was TEA POT, that would be less interesting/elegant than what we have here, which his "POT" hidden inside other words / phrases every time). The puzzle was too easy for a Thursday, but when the concept really works (as this one does), I don't mind the lack of challenge so much. I should add that the grid was very smooth overall, and had some nice non-theme answers, including "DREAM ON!" and "COME UNDONE." The J.A.S.A. Crossword Class puzzles are always really polished. You'd think puzzle-by-committee might get clunky, but nope. Reliably good stuff, every time.

There was only one answer I didn't know today, and that was MOMO (54D: Steamed dumpling in Tibetan cuisine). No Tibetan restaurants where I live. I know there's (at least) one in Minneapolis, where I visit frequently. I've driven past it a bunch. Maybe I'll make my best friends take me there next time I visit. This is a debut for MOMO ... at least as a food product. It last appeared in 1973, as an [Owl of Guam] (!?!?!?!?!). Wow ... I mean, wow. I'm kind of in awe of how obscure that is. Like, even the Gods of Crosswordese were like, "pass." First trotted out in 1942 ([Short-eared owl.]), then ... thirty-one years passed ... then [Owl of guam] ... then fifty-two years passed, and here we are, eating Tibetan food. I feel like this is a real story of perseverance and triumph. Instead of caterpillar-to-butterfly, we get owl-to-dumpling. All things are possible through crosswords.

Normally I would tell you where I struggled, but I struggled nowhere today. There will be many who (understandably) don't know who E.C. SEGAR, but I teach a course on Comics, so that's a name I know well (you see both ECSEGAR and SEGAR from time to time in puzzles) (the "E" stands for ELZIE, in case that's ever relevant ... which it has been, three times in NYTXW history). Bob ROSS, ETHAN Frome, Hall & Oates' "MANEATER," the Latin phrase DE NOVO—all these things are right over the plate for me. I'm guessing that for a lot of people, this will be among the fastest rebus puzzles they've ever completed—maybe not a record Thursday, as it's always a little time-consuming and fussy to enter the damned rebus squares, but still, I'm scanning the grid for real trouble areas and not seeing them. 

[35D: Hall & Oates hit with the opening lyric "She'll only come out at night"]

Bullets:

• 21D: ___ chips, snack from Hawaii (TARO) — so much tasty food in this one. 
• 28A: Bee-dazzler? (PETAL) — is it the PETALs that dazzle? I guess so. Bees are drawn to color. I just like that this clue references a ridiculous As Seen On TV product from the '90s:

• 31A: E, in a musical mnemonic (EVERY) — "Every Good Boy Does Fine" (or "Deserves Fudge")
• 47A: Laura of "Jurassic Park" (DERN) — there have been lots of tributes written in the past week for the late, great David Lynch, but Laura DERN's (which I just read today) is probably my favorite. Well worth your time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

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Epitome of completeness / SAT 10-5-24 / Oldest city in France / "Reward" for altruism, maybe / Lover of Pyramus, in Ovid / Political activist who organized 1963's March on Washington / Mercedes ___, icon of Argentine folk music / Feature of Garamond or Perpetua / Penalty taker's lament / Beer whose name means "morning sun" / Erroneous justification for a 2003 invasion, for short

Constructor: Natan Last

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: BAYARD RUSTIN (5D: Political activist who organized 1963's March on Washington) —

Bayard Rustin (/ˈbaɪ.ərd/ BY-ərd; March 17, 1912 – August 24, 1987) was an American political activist, a prominent leader in social movements for civil rights, socialism, nonviolence, and gay rights. Rustin was the principal organizer of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963.

Rustin worked in 1941 with A. Philip Randolph on the March on Washington Movement to press for an end to racial discrimination in the military and defense employment. Rustin later organized Freedom Rides, and helped to organize the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to strengthen Martin Luther King Jr.'s leadership; he taught King about non-violence. Rustin worked alongside Ella Baker, a co-director of the Crusade for Citizenship, in 1954; and before the Montgomery bus boycott, he helped organize a group called "In Friendship" to provide material and legal assistance to people threatened with eviction from their tenant farms and homes. Rustin became the head of the AFL–CIO's A. Philip Randolph Institute, which promoted the integration of formerly all-white unions and promoted the unionization of African Americans. During the 1970s and 1980s, Rustin served on many humanitarian missions, such as aiding refugees from Vietnam and Cambodia. 

Rustin was a gay man and, due to criticism over his sexuality, usually advised other civil rights leaders from behind the scenes. During the 1980s, he became a public advocate on behalf of gay causes, speaking at events as an activist and supporter of human rights. [...] 

On November 20, 2013, President Barack Obama posthumously awarded Rustin the Presidential Medal of Freedom. (wikipedia)

• • •

Hey, wanna see someone luck out? Watch:

Ha ha, look at those first two answers, 1-Across and 1-Down. Wrong and wrong ... And Yet! Somehow that "Y" in TYNE ended up in the right place, which was all I needed to get "YOU FOOL!," which I then confirmed with FBI LAB. When I took the above screenshot, I had no idea I had any wrong answers; I was just documenting my progress, as I often do on late-week puzzles. "Look at me, coming out of the gate on fire!" Little did I know I was literally on fire, i.e. my first two answers were a mini trash fire. Luckily I was able to put that fire out real quick—probably ten seconds after I took the screenshot. But I just wanted to show you how skill is great and all, but you can't beat dumb luck. Wrong answers ... lead to right answers ... and the puzzle opens right up. Amazing. Thank you, OOXTEPLERNON (He's the God of Short Bad Fill, but I assume his purview extends to all things crossword-related—when He's angry, you get lots of EER and EEN and EEK thrown at you, but sometimes he exhibits generosity and blesses even your FLUBS).

100% of the difficulty in today's puzzle came from proper nouns. Natan makes puzzles for the New Yorker, and this felt a lot like a "Moderately Challenging" New Yorker puzzle—i.e. a themeless that's somewhat heavy on proper nouns I've never heard of, ones for which I sometimes have to work every cross (to be clear, I do “Moderately Challenging” New Yorker puzzles in ~6 minutes—their difficulty ratings are, uh, idiosyncratic). Today, the "yipes" proper noun, for me, was BAYARD RUSTIN. When I read his bio, I think, "jeez, how do you not know him, you should really know him—he was a central figure in the civil rights movement." Then I see that he was gay and (therefore, in a more homophobic era) worked largely behind the scenes. Still, he's a huge deal, Presidential Medal of Freedom and all that, so ... can't complain about his presence here. Happy to learn (or possibly relearn) his name. But man, every single cross I needed! I don't know any BAYARDs or any RUSTINs. At all. Those are not names on my list of name possibilities. BAYARD has appeared six times in the NYTXW, but ... well, here's the complete list of clues for those BAYARDs:

[xwordinfo.com]

Gotta be honest, every single one of those clues is gibberish to me. "Legendary horse"? Who's "Rinaldo"?

Bayard (Modern French: [bajaʁ]; Dutch: Ros Beiaard or just Beiaard; Italian: Baiardo) is a magical bay horse in the legends derived from the medieval chansons de geste. These texts, especially that of The Four Sons of Aymon, attribute to him magical qualities and a supernatural origin. He is known for his strength and intelligence, and possesses the supernatural ability to adjust his size to his riders.

Looks like "Rinaldo" is one of the Four Sons of Aymon. LOL I went to grad school for medieval literature and didn't know any of this! (Don't blame UM, though, I was really a very lazy student). So that's a brief crossword history of BAYARD. What of RUSTIN? Any RUSTINs? Hey, wow ... looks like Bayard RUSTIN has appeared in the NYTXW before ... once, way back in February of 1984! Clue: [Bayard ___, Washington March organizer: 1963]. I can't believe the crossword discovered him and then mislaid him for forty years. Welcome back, buddy!

Other proper nouns of my not-knowing: well, LYME, you saw that. I was thinking of Newcastle-Upon-TYNE, which is another Newcastle-___-___ place in England (how many are there!?) (1A: Newcastle-under-___, Staffordshire, England). Then there was SOSA, which gave me a bit of a fright because I had SO-A and no idea what letter to put there. This is because I didn't know LYME and so had LY-E, which gave me -OBBO-S for 3D: Don, and I absolutely Could Not parse it. Brain kept trying to make -OBBO-S into one word. Thought maybe the Argentinian singer was SONA (25A: Mercedes ___, icon of Argentine folk music). Certainly never expected SOSA, since the only SOSA I know is the late-'90s, PED-enhanced baseball slugger. But eventually my brain kicked in with the "hey, maybe it's two words" wisdom and I got through (MOB BOSS). Later on, there was MONSTRO—no idea (32D: Name of the whale in "Pinocchio"). I didn't see the recent Guillermo del Toro remake of Pinocchio, and I never cared much for that whole story when I was growing up, so once you get past the whole "I wanna be a real boy" / nose-growth stuff, I'm kind of tapped out on Pinocchio lore. I guess that's mostly it for proper nouns, except for THISBE (12D: Lover of Pyramus, in Ovid), ROME (37A: W.H. Auden's "The Fall of ___"), BIALIK (36D: Post-Trebek "Jeopardy!" host), and MARSEILLE (32A: Oldest city in France), which I'd at least heard of, and The LAST BATTLE, which I actually knew (again, dumb luck—I happen to be married to world's foremost reader of The Chronicles of Narnia; those books pretty much define her childhood. Please don't tell her I initially confused two of the books today and wrote in The LAST PRINCE) (8D: Seventh and final "Chronicles of Narnia" book, with "The").

Outside the proper nouns, almost zero trouble today. If there was stuff I didn't know, I was able to flow right around it. And "flow" is a good word for what this puzzle had. Really enjoyed whooshing around the grid, particularly through that lovely, creamy center. There's nothing flashy in there, but it's all incredibly smooth and lively, especially given how dense the long answers are there. Had a little trouble dropping into the SE corner, only because at 21D: It's nothing new, I wanted SAME OLD SONG or SAME OLD SAME OLD, neither of which fit. But I thought "maybe STORY?" and yes, that was it. Finished up easily from there.



Notes:

• 16A: Beer whose name means "morning sun" (ASAHI) — ASAHI, the official beer of crosswords. When in doubt, guess ASAHI (esp. if it's five letters and you already have the "A")
• 18A: Feature of Garamond or Perpetua (SERIF) — Garamond and Perpetua are fonts.
• 44A: Double duty? (STUNTS) — my proudest moment of the day. Got this off the first "S"! The "duty" of a stunt double is ... yeah it's right there in the name: STUNTS. I think I wanted "STAND IN" at first, but it didn't fit.
• 7D: Erroneous justification for a 2003 invasion, for short (WMD) — it's great when a clue can be factually accurate while also being, at the same time, a great "fuck-you" to an entire lying, warmongering administration. [Chef's kiss] to this clue!
• 34D: Penalty taker's lament ("I MISSED") — "Penalty" here is a "penalty shot" (as in football, which is to say, "soccer").

• 35D: Chest bump? (PEC) — nice cross with DIP (33A: Bodyweight exercise). A wide-grip DIP can help build your PECs. 
• 41D: Cheek ('TUDE) — short for "attitude." "Cheek" here means "sass," "backtalk," etc.
• 48D: Whirl, so to speak (TRY) — As in, "Give it a whirl!" Like this clue a lot.
• 17A: Pitches low and inside? (SUBWAY ADS) — best clue of the day, a word-perfect misdirection. Looks like baseball ... isn't baseball. (Congrats to the New York Metropolitans for advancing to the NLDS ... maybe we'll get a Subway Series this year, but that is not my wish: go Tigers!)
• 33D: Epitome of completeness (DOTTED i) — unsurprisingly, CROSSEDT has never, not once, appeared in the NYTXW. Eight DOTTEDIs in the last decade, but no CROSSEDTs! I am officially waging a complaint on behalf of all of T-dom.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Discontinued Mitsubishi sports sedan, informally / SAT 3-2-24 / Currency in the Legend of Zelda / Event of 1/31/2020 / Performance featuring masklike kumadori makeup / Rapper/singer with the 2005 hit "Temperature" / Comedian who played Louie the Lilac on "Batman" / Cute images with captions like "If it fits, I sits"

Constructor: Natan Last

Relative difficulty: Easy-Challenging (80% cake ... and then the southeast corner)

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: ALLIE B. Latimer (2D: ___ B. Latimer, civil rights activist in the National Women's Hall of Fame) —

Allie B. Latimer (born February 16, 1928, in Coraopolis, Pennsylvania) was the first woman and the first African American to serve as General Counsel of a major United States federal agency. In her work to bring the government into compliance with the Civil Rights Act, she founded and developed Federally Employed Women (FEW) and worked to end gender discrimination in public sector jobs throughout her 40+ year career. According to the National Women's Hall of Fame, “FEW’s many accomplishments and activities have impacted the federal workplace and contributed to improved working conditions for all.” [...] 

• • •

[Don't look at me, Alfie, you're
on your own]

WEDDING RINGS—that's it. That's the story of this puzzle in two words. The tragic story of this puzzle. And things were going so well for me! I was having a delightful spin around the grid, pointing in recognition at so many things I love. "Hey there, poetry! How ya doin'?! Baseball! My man, what is up? Ooh, look, STUNT DOGS, hello buddies! And .. wait ... holy cow, is that ... are those cats!? Sitting in boxes! Oh my god I gotta go say hi to them!" Just enjoying the hell out of myself, frankly. So pleased, so ... well, confident. Once I got a little bit into that fat middle section, I dropped WEDDING RINGS like it was nothing, casually. I didn't even bother following it down to the bottom of the grid to check crosses because, I mean, WEDDING RINGS, what else was it gonna be? (18D: Altar exchange). It was like I put a stake in the SE corner and thought "I'll be back to finish you off later." And so the middle went down and the SW went down and finally I headed over to the SE corner to close things out ... and promptly got flattened. Now, if I'd, say, paid attention to the informal names of bygone sedans (?) or played Zelda, ever (ha) (39D: Currency in The Legend of Zelda = RUPEE), or could've pulled the name of the artist on a two-decade-old rap song out of my hat (I had a different SEAN in my head the whole time, ugh), I might have realized the RINGS problem more quickly, and made a reasonably expeditious if not terribly graceful exit from this puzzle. But no. Instead I invented an informal name for the bygone sedan (the EXO!) (46D: Discontinued Mitsubishi sports sedan, informally), convinced myself that an English word means something it does not mean (EXIGENT!) (48A: Clear), and ... and ... and ... sputtered.

It seems hard to believe that I could get so far into the puzzle and not just ... close it out! It's not like I had nothing down there. I was able to guess DORSET (50A: ___ Horn (British sheep breed)) and drive TENANT through that section (35D: Lease signatory) and from there pick up TSK and TATA and KATY and STIHL!!! (32D: Big name in power tools)

But so intractable did the resulting rat's nest of letters prove that I knew I had something wrong. The problem was, I had no idea what, and so, masterfully, I pulled out ... STIHL! [Exceedingly deep sigh]. If only I could've seen TAX CUT!!! (31D: Stereotypical campaign promise). But that was not to be. At some point ... no idea how long it took me ... I started to pull things back to the studs (keep in mind—I thought RINGS *was* a stud). Out went the "X" in EXO/EXIGENT and then by some miracle EVIDENT sprang to mind for [Clear] and I thought, but it can't be, that would mean RINGS is ... wr- ... RING is wr- ... wrong!? EVIDENT to ***BANDS*** to all the dominoes falling in quick succession, the end.

My main issue with the "spare tire" thing was I didn't really think they were going to make a fat joke. So even though fat-around-the-gut was the first thing I thought of for "spare tire," I kept retreating back to literal, boot-of-the-car spare tire in my mind. But the real problem all along was RINGS. I could blame the rapper or the video game, but all that stuff fell into place when I made the simple (yet nearly impossible) move from RINGS to BANDS. The rest of the puzzle? My joyful romp? It's a misty memory now. Not a false memory, though. It was definitely a good time while it lasted.

[aka Civilization and Its Discontents]

It did take a little pushing to get into that fat center of the grid. I wasn't entirely sure about INSTANT WIN, given how the clue was phrased (didn't seem like a "yield" to me, exactly) (6D: Yield of some scratch-off tickets), and so I kinda held back there. I also had BLOOD VESSELS in there before the obvious "MAD" forced me to reconsider (37A: "We're all ___ here. I'm ___. You're ___": Cheshire Cat). I had some trouble getting all those long central Acrosses from their back ends, but once the STREAMS part of BLOODSTREAMS and the WEDDING part of WEDDING RINGS (argh) went in, I got SOUND BITE and the center toppled over easily. NUNHOOD! Can't decide if that's terrible or my favorite thing in the grid! If you can have PRIESTHOOD, why not NUNHOOD!?

Bullet points:

• 7A: Dock ___, pitcher who claimed to have thrown a no-hitter on LSD in 1970 (ELLIS) — there's an entertaining documentary about this on Netflix. Or there was. Looks like it's not there anymore. You can watch it free (with ads) on Tubi. It's called "No No: A Dockumentary." Recommended.
• 23A: Talk trashed? (SLUR) — really thought this clue was insulting people with speech impediments ("you talk like trash, loser!") but then realized that "trashed" here meant "drunk"; when you're drunk you might SLUR your words. Fair enough.
• 38A: Event of 1/31/2020 (BREXIT) — I remember the vote. That happened in the summer some time (2016, I think). The actual Day Of ... total unknown to me. Jan. 31, 2020, you say? I believe you.
• 14D: Comedian who played Louie the Lilac on "Batman" (BERLE) — wow, reaching back for this one. I had no idea Milton BERLE was ever on the Adam West "Batman" TV show! That is the "Batman" we're talking about, right? They didn't bring BERLE back in hologram form for the 2022 "Batman" movie, did they!? 

• 12A: Place for some nonstarters (BULLPEN) — in baseball, relief pitchers (i.e. non-starters) come out of the BULLPEN (a kind of holding room typically found beyond the outfield, behind the wall)
• 13A: Currency that replaced the British West African pound (LEONE) — Crosswordese to the rescue! I have no idea where, exactly, this is a currency, but I know that it *is* a currency because ... crosswords! (It will perhaps shock you, as it did me, to learn that the LEONE is the currency of ... Sierra LEONE)

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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