Wallow moodily / TUES 2-27-24 / Oscar winner Mahershala / Machu Picchu resident / "Defend the rights of all people nationwide" org. / :-(

Hi, everyone! It’s Clare, here for the last Tuesday in February. My wonderful, wonderful Liverpool just won the men’s League Cup (a tournament among the English clubs), and it was glorious. This is the last season for Liverpool with the best manager of all time, Jurgen Klopp, so we’re trying to make sure he goes out with a bang. I’m also getting ready for “The Slam,” when Rafael Nadal and Carlos Alcaraz play each other in Vegas in a week. (I’ve certainly seen enough ads for it.) I’m still adjusting to being back from Mexico — after eating my body weight in tacos and drinking my body weight in margaritas.

Anywho, on to the puzzle…

Constructor: Nate Cardin

Relative difficulty: A great day for personal bests (I checked to make sure I wasn’t accidentally solving a Monday puzzle)

THEME: Two-word answers where the first word in each answer ends in -INKY 

Theme answers:

• SLINKY DOG (18A: "Toy Story" dachshund with a springy body) 
• WINKY FACE (20A: This emoticon: ;-)) 
• STINKY TOFU (35A: Vegetarian street food known for its distinct smell) 
• KINKY BOOTS (40A: Tony Award-winning musical with the song "Sex Is in the Heel") 
• PINKY RING (56A: Little finger adornment) 
• RINKY DINK (59A: Small-time)

Word of the Day: STINKY TOFU (35A: Vegetarian street food known for its distinct smell) —

Stinky tofu is a Chinese form of fermented tofu that has a strong odor. It is usually sold at night markets or roadside stands as a snack, or in lunch bars as a side dish, rather than in restaurants. Traditionally, the dish is fermented in a brine with vegetables and meat, sometimes for months. Modern factory-produced stinky tofu is marinated in brine for one or two days to add odor. According to a Chinese legend, a scholar named Wang Zhihe hailing from Huang Shan in Anhui Province invented stinky tofu during the Qing dynasty. After failing the imperial examination, Wang stayed in Beijing and relied on selling tofu to make a living. One day, having a huge quantity of unsold tofu on his hands, he cut the tofu into small cubes and put them into an earthen jar. The stinky tofu that Wang Zhihe invented gained popularity and was later served at the imperial Qing Dynasty palace. The dish has now become extremely popular in Taiwan. (Wiki)

• • •

I solved this puzzle so quickly that I didn’t have time to either enjoy it or find it annoying. My solve was the epitome of “no thoughts, just vibes.” I suppose it’s impressive to come up with six words that end in -INKY and fit them into a puzzle (when there aren’t that many possible words for this)? And it’s impressive to end the puzzle with two -INK words? But that’s about the best I can do for the theme. The rhyming felt rudimentary, and I was missing some sort of revealer. 

KINKY BOOTS (40A) as a theme answer was at least fun. It’s an absolutely amazing musical (my sister saw it on Broadway and has a picture at the stage door with Billy Porter). RINKY DINK (59A) is also a pleasant phrase — makes me think of “co-inky-dink,” which is an objectively fun thing to say. WAGS (13D: Moves excitedly, like a puppy's tail) crossing SLINKY DOG (18A) was clever, and 6D (:-() and 20A (This emoticon: ;-)) crossed. I also liked ALTRUIST (45A: One with unselfish motivations) and ASYMMETRICAL (10D: Like a dress with a diagonal hemline, say), as they’re words not commonly in puzzles. I actually wore an ASYMMETRICAL skirt to work today, so this was especially fitting for me. The hardest part of the puzzle may have been trying to remember how to spell ASYMMETRICAL. 

We had a mini theme of musicals in the puzzle with “KINKY BOOTS,” “Mamma MIA,” “It’s Raining MEN” (in the jukebox musical, “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert”), ANNA (of the “Frozen” musical), and AGONY (a song featured in “Into the Woods”). If the shoe FITS could have been a song in “Rodgers + Hammerstein's Cinderella” (yes, I’m reaching). 

PODIA (2D: Speakers' platforms) was maybe the only word that gave me pause. It’s obviously legit, just ugly. I liked seeing the WNBA in the puzzle, but we can probably get a little more creative than the __ Vegas Aces (23A for LAS), which is about the most obvious clue of all time. I really didn’t like the clue/answer for 66A: Top part as HEAD. The answers for 41D (YUCKY), 6D (I’M SAD), and 44A (I’M OK) didn’t thrill me. And having two I’Ms in the puzzle seems odd. In general, the blockiness of the grid meant there were a ton of three-, four-, and five-letter words, none of which did anything for me other than fill space and which contributed to the easiness of the puzzle. 

Overall, the puzzle felt much more like a Monday. It was my fastest Tuesday solve ever, which I suppose counts for something. But there just wasn’t much to it.

Misc.

• AGONY (52D: Ecstasy's opposite) is one of the all-time great songs. The actors in videos of stage performances I’ve seen are great. But this version by Chris PINE (56D: Christmas tree, often) and Billy Magnussen is everything to me. I can’t see the word AGONY anymore without immediately wanting to sing it out loud dramatically.  
• 43D “Wallow moodily” is a perfect clue. 10/10 no notes. 
• The answer for 43D: SULK crosses USC (46A: Trojans' sch.), which is coincidentally what USC does a lot after they play Cal (obligatory mention for the sake of my sister, who says the initials stand for the University of Spoiled Children) 
• NADA (11D: Nothing, in Mexico) was fun in the puzzle coming off the trip to Mexico. I was just thinking about it, though, and I’m not sure that I said NADA once while I was there, and I spoke a decent amount of Spanish. (Don’t ask anyone how my accent is, though…)
• As long as you insist, here is a clip from Liverpool winning the trophy:)

• The celebrations 🏆😍pic.twitter.com/TB6b35T4RU

  — Liverpool FC USA (@LFCUSA) February 25, 2024

And that’s all from me! Have a great leap day, and I’ll see ya in March. 

Signed, Clare Carroll, off to take a DRINKY DRINK of my chai

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Mountaineering enthusiast, in slang / TUE 12-5-23 / Barriers that slide in and out of a wall / Cookie-flavored breakfast cereal / Something you don't have to pay for, redundantly /

Constructor: Nate Cardin

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (times will be fast, in part because the puzzle is undersized (14x15))

THEME: OUT OF SORTS (54A: Irritable ... or how you might describe all the words in the answers to the starred clues?) — both words of two-word theme answers can follow "OUT OF" in familiar phrases, so ... they are the "sorts" of words that can follow "OUT OF" (?), I guess:

Theme answers:

• PRINT ORDER (15A: *Number 
• POCKET DOORS (18A: *Barriers that slide in and out of a wall)
• STOCK CHARACTER (32A: *Stereotypical literary persona)
• FASHION LINE (51A: *Designer's collection)

Word of the Day: OREO O'S (45D: Cookie-flavored breakfast cereal) —

  

Oreo O's is a breakfast cereal that consists of Oreo-flavored O-shaped pieces of cereal. It was conceived of by an Ogively & Mather NYC advertising employee and introduced in 1997 by Post Cereals. In 2001 the cereal got a new recipe with real creme filling. A variation of Oreo O's called Extreme Creme Taste Oreo O's contained Oreo filling-flavored marshmallows.

The cereal was launched in 1997 and discontinued in 2007 everywhere other than South Korea. In May 2017, Post Cereals announced that it would restart production of Oreo O's starting June 23 and continue production indefinitely. (wikipedia) (my emph.)

• • •

These "both words can follow" themes are always grim. The highly restrictive nature of the theme usually makes for at least one dull and / or awkward answer. This explains the total boringness of PRINT ORDER and the (to me) architectural niche-ness of POCKET DOORS. At first I didn't get that *both* words in the theme answers were supposed to be able to follow "OUT OF," so I was baffled by why you would choose POCKET DOORS when you could choose, say, POCKET WATCH or KNIFE or GUIDE. And why only PRINT, POCKET, STOCK and FASHION when you could've worked with BOUNDS, STEP, CONTROL, etc. But it's *both* words that have to work with "OUT OF," not just the first word. That's a higher degree of difficulty, construction-wise. Sadly, that does not translate to a higher degree of pleasure, solving-wise. STOCK CHARACTER and FASHION LINE work perfectly. Both highly in-the-language. Clean, Right on the money. But again, the revealer on these "both words can follow" themes is always a let down. "Oh, I see. Huh. Good finds, I guess." That's pretty much peak feeling after a puzzle theme like this.

I was actually startled that the fill was as weak as it was today, given the relatively non-demanding nature of the theme. Any time long theme answers abut, as they do in this grid, filling a puzzle cleanly can get tricky (as those abutting answers are locked in, and you have to make (in this case) seven adjacent Downs run cleanly through them), but I was getting boring vibes right out of the gate, in the tiny NW corner, where everything felt stale. And then to come upon dubious stuff like SNORTY as well as ugly stuff like USH and OREOOS, while only occasionally hitting anything very interesting ... it was pretty disappointing. Again, the theme answers aren't really giving you juice today because they have to meet these very restrictive thematic terms, so the fill really should get up off its feet and help out, but all we get of note is mountaineering slang (ROCK JOCK) and a redundancy (FREE GIFT). I liked both, actually—never heard ROCK JOCK, but ... you know, it rhymes, and who doesn't like rhyme? And while FREE GIFT doesn't exactly sparkle, the clue at least makes it interesting. I am also partial to FRECKLE, having had lots of them as a kid. It's a low-key fun word. But most of the rest of the fill runs forgettable to SPLAT. 

No tough spots today beyond figuring out what the hell kind of "Barriers" slide in and out of a wall. Well, ROCK JOCK slowed me down, but not in a bad or particularly troubling way. That answer is giving off weird vibes, though. Like, it's evocative of so many other things. Like SHOCK JOCKS, or ROCKS FOR JOCKS (which is what Geology for non-majors was called in college, right?). There's also the "MTV ROCK & JOCK something or other" ... some kind of contest? ... maybe a celebrity basketball game? ... my brain is not currently willing to relive the '90s, so it's not coming in clearly. Ah, here we go: here's an unwanted trip down Memory Lane for you Millennial / Xer types:

MTV Rock N' Jock is a television series on MTV featuring actors, musicians, and other entertainers playing sports with professional athletes. The original episode was called The MTV Rock N' Jock Diamond Derby, and was changed to MTV's Rock N' Jock Softball Challenge, in year 2. The concept expanded to include basketball in 1991, football in 1997 and bowling in 1999 The game was an annual feature (with multiple reruns of most episodes) for many years on MTV.

Belinda Carlisle, Corbin Bernsen, and David Faustino, all on the same team! Man, that original 

MTV's First Annual Rock N' Jock Diamond Derby (1990) must've been something to see. And Keanu Reeves! Kevin Costner! I forgot the kind of star power MTV could wrangle back then.

As for the puzzle, it was short. It was easy. It is done. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Foreign films translated and captioned by enthusiasts / TUE 10-10-23 / 2019 Taika Waititi film about a boy with an animal nickname / Olympian who competed as both a hurdler (2008 and 2012) and a bobsledder (2014) / Hit 1925 musical that inspired the sequel "Yes, Yes, Yvette" / Extinct creatures of Mauritius

Constructor: Nate Cardin

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: XOXO (70A: Affectionate sign-off ... or a pattern hinting at the starts to the six starred clues) — "X" here stands for a different letter in each of the first words of the theme answers:

Theme answers:

• GOGO DANCERS (20A: *Gyrating performers at a nightclub)
• JOJO RABBIT (30A: *2019 Taika Waititi film about a boy with an animal nickname)
• YOYO TRICKS (45A: *Walk the Dog and Around the World, e.g.)
• NO, NO, NANETTE (54A: *Hit 1925 musical that inspired the sequel "Yes, Yes, Yvette")
• DODO BIRDS (11D: *Extinct creatures of Mauritius)
• LOLO JONES (29D: *Olympian who competed as both a hurdler (2008 and 2012) and a bobsledder (2014))

Word of the Day: FANSUBS (9D: Foreign films translated and captioned by enthusiasts) —

A fansub (short for fan-subtitled) is a version of a foreign film or foreign television program, typically anime or dorama which has been translated by fans (as opposed to an officially licensed translation done by paid professionals) and subtitled into a language usually other than that of the original. (my emph.) (wikipedia)

• • •

Algebra! Fun! No, seriously, pretty fun. There was a time when just running a bunch of -O-O answers would've constituted a whole theme, and I thought that's what was going on here at first. Some of the -O-O answers were colorful, but rhyme alone seemed like not the most inspired idea for a theme. But then the little XOXO revealer tipped me from the "meh" into the "oh, cool" camp. Funny how the right revealer, in the right place, with the right rationale, even something as small and seemingly unremarkable as XOXO, can make all the difference. There are some conspicuous XOXO absentees, most notably anyone named COCO! Gauff and Chanel are so mad right now! There's also David Chang's popular restaurant(s) / culinary brand, MOMOFUKU, that would've been cool. I can think of other viable XOXO patterns (TOTO, HOHO ... BOBO?) but none that would work well as the first word of a theme answer. Anyway, this set is very well chosen, and there are so many that you can hardly complain there weren't enough. These are the answers that fit symmetrically, and this set constitutes the great majority of viable answers. Plus, intersecting themers are always impressive when you can pull them off while still keeping the themer set tight *and* keeping the surrounding fill clean. Mission accomplished on both counts.

The puzzle felt Monday-easy to me. I guess some of the themers are proper nouns people may not have heard of, or may have forgotten, as I forgot the last name of LOLO JONES (hell of a last name to forget—the paradigmatic generic last name). It's a good thing the themers themselves sparkled, because the fill itself (while clean) was pretty rudimentary. The one answer that seemed like it was from outer space, especially compared to the utterly ordinary quality of the rest of the fill, was FANSUBS. I watch a lot of movies. I have watched ~300 movies / year ever since the start of the pandemic. So when I read this clue, I thought "What?" I couldn't even conceive of why FANSUBS would be needed (or why I would want "fans" subtitling my film!?). Then I looked it up, and had one of those "ohhhhhh, ok, that makes sense." I watch a gajillion films, but hardly any of them are "anime or dorama," which are the kinds of works that typically get FANSUBS (I didn't even know what "dorama" was—it's Japanese television drama). Seems like maybe it's actually most prevalent in the world of television than that of film. Anyway, adding context to the clue wouldn't have helped me get it any faster (it was pretty inferable as is), but it would've made me understand why I'd never heard of it a little better. Nothing else in the grid was unknown to me. Don't ask me why I'm so familiar with the title to a 1925 musical (NO, NO, NANETTE)—I just am. Actually, I'm quite sure I learned it from crosswords. Maybe as a clue for NANETTE. Seems likely. Yup, there it is:

[xwordinfo]

Was thinking about LARS just yesterday (64A: "___ and the Real Girl" (2007 Ryan Gosling film))—not the title character (played by Ryan Gosling), but the "Mary Tyler Moore Show" character (played by no one!). You know, Phyllis's husband, the one she talks about alllll the time but that we never see. It got me thinking: is Vera (Norm's wife) from "Cheers" just a Boston LARS? That is, the spouse of a secondary character in a major sitcom who's mentioned a lot but never seen?! Maybe Vera was the most obvious homage in the world and it just never occurred to me until just now. Anyway, I like to imagine that LARS and Vera found each other late in life and are currently living happily together on a lake somewhere in northern Michigan. Look, if you don't show me the characters in your sitcom then I get to invent lives for them, those are the rules. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. I *thought* the grid looked wide, but it’s not; it’s just short (by one—only 14 rows tall)

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Popular newspaper puzzle / THU 7-26-18 / "It wasn't me" / Cirque du Soleil performers / Mystery novelist Cross / Singers Nina and Lisa / R&B singer Khan

Constructor: Nate Cardin

Relative difficulty: 7:36 (Thursday average: 13:39; Thursday best: 5:14)

THEME: # — What kids today call a [70A: With 71-Across, symbol used four times in this puzzle with four different meanings; 71A: See 71-Across]: HASH TAG

Word of the Day: OCTOTHORPE (54A: Numerical prefix ... or, with 62-Across, another name for this puzzle's key symbol; 62A: Olympian Jim or Ian) —

Most scholars believe the word was invented by workers at the Bell Telephone Laboratories by 1968, who needed a word for the symbol on the telephone keypad. Don MacPherson is said to have created the word by combining octo and the last name of Jim Thorpe, an Olympic medalist. Howard Eby and Lauren Asplund claim to have invented the word as a joke in 1964, combining octo with the syllable therp which, because of the "th" digraph, was hard to pronounce in different languages. The Merriam-Webster New Book of Word Histories, 1991, has a long article that is consistent with Doug Kerr's essay, which says "octotherp" was the original spelling, and that the word arose in the 1960s among telephone engineers as a joke. Other hypotheses for the origin of the word include the last name of James Oglethorpe, or using the Old English word for village, thorp, because the symbol looks like a village surrounded by eight fields. The word was popularized within and outside Bell Labs. The first appearance of "octothorp" in a US patent is in a 1973 filing. This patent also refers to the six-pointed asterisk (✻) used on telephone buttons as a "sextile." (Wikipedia)

• • •

I am so happy to blog the New York Times crossword debut of my dear friend Nate Cardin! Nate has had puzzles in the Chronicle of Higher Education, the AV Club (with Paolo Pasco), and as a guest constructor for Matt Gaffney's Weekly Crossword Contest. He is also the editor of Queer Qrosswords -- which, if you don't have yet, follow the link to make a donation of $10 or more and get 22 puzzles by awesome constructors, many of whom debuted in the collection. Full disclosure: Nate had shared this theme idea with me some time ago. It's very common for constructors to share ideas and early drafts of puzzles with friends (and I have found the crossword community to be enormously generous with time and support). Though I hadn't seen this puzzle since it was submitted (and edited), with that advance knowledge my time is likely faster than a Thursday average.

Theme answers:

• [1D: A.T.M. necessity]/[20A: Accountant]: PIN #/# CRUNCHER (# = number)
• [26D: Place to get a rescue animal]/[41A: Dessert made primarily of flour, butter, eggs and sugar]: DOG #/# CAKE (# = pound)
• [27D: Far parts of the universe]/[48A: Astronauts' workplace]: DEEP #/# STATION (# = space)
• [36D: Finely honed]/[57A: Deadeyes]: RAZOR #/# SHOOTERS (# = sharp)

This is a very Thursday theme, in that is has a gimmick: solvers are expected to intuit that they should enter a symbol rather than rebus the letters (i.e. cram more than one into a square) for the shared words in the themers. I suppose I knew, but hadn't really reflected upon the potential of, the fact that # can stand for four different words in different contexts. It has only come to be referred to as a hashtag since its widespread use on Twitter starting about a decade ago (for a library-science lecture about the hashtag as metadata in social networking folksonomies, slide into my DMs). As we expect on a Thursday, the fill has strengths and weaknesses to accommodate some trickery; I'm not entirely sure that [66A: Plow and plant again]: REFARM is a thing, and ESTE EMIT ETON ETATS EATER. AMGEN? I don't know that I would've been able to make this grid any cleaner, but the theme concept is so strong that frankly, dear readers, I don't give A DAMN [31D: What Rhett Butler didn't give].

Brandi Carlisle sings about [27A: "It wasn't me," for one]: DENIAL

Bullets:

• [5D: Stone-capturing board game]: MANCALA — I remember playing this at my open-classroom hippie/alternative elementary school. Apparently it has been played for millennia, across dozens of cultures.
• [46D: Mother-and-daughter singers Nina and Lisa]: SIMONES — Lisa has sung on Broadway, originating the title role in the crossword-friendly musical Aida, as well as roles in Rent and Jesus Christ Superstar.
• [53D: R&B singer Khan]: CHAKA — Chaka Khan sang for a decade with Rufus, had a number of hits, broke into disco with "I'm Every Woman," then scored a crossover pop hit in 1984 with "I Feel for You," a cover of a 1979 song by the artist formerly and futurely known as Prince.  
• [61D: Make out, in Manchester]: SNOG — This may be utter shite, but some Brit once told me in a pub that in the UK they had to change the name of the second Austin Powers film to The Spy Who Snogged Me because shag is a far dirtier word over there than it is here.
• [8A: Popular newspaper puzzle]: JUMBLE — What, you thought it would be CROSSWORD? Crossword puzzles are not popular. I mean, this post will probably get barely 10,000 hits.

Signed, Laura, Sorceress of CrossWorld

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