Device worn by a video gamer / MON 4-27-26 / Spinoff of "The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" / Han Solo's response to Leia's "I love you" / Word before beer or after square / Spinks who defeated Muhammad Ali / Do some booty-shaking / Grammy-winning a cappella group famous for their Christmas albums

Constructor: Neville Fogarty

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (the "Medium" is solely for a couple of the proper names, which not everyone is going to be familiar with)

[16A: Han Solo's response to Leia's "I love you" ("I KNOW"]

THEME: VR HEADSET (65A: Device worn by a video gamer ... or a hint to 17-, 24-, 39- and 53-Across) — familiar two-word phrases where the "heads" (i.e. first letters) of the two words are "V" and "R," respectively:

Theme answers:

• VOCAL REST (17A: Singer's recovery period)
• VOLCANIC ROCK (24A: Pumice or basalt)
• VANDERPUMP RULES (39A: Spinoff of "The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills")
• VOTING RECORD (53A: Congressional history)

Word of the Day: VANDERPUMP RULES (39A) —

Vanderpump Rules is an American reality television series that has been broadcast on Bravo since January 7, 2013. Developed as the first spin-off from The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, it has aired 12 seasons and focuses on Lisa Vanderpump and the staff at her restaurants and bars: SUR Restaurant & Lounge, Pump Restaurant, and Tom Tom, in West Hollywood, California.

The success of the show has resulted in three spin-offs: Vanderpump Rules After Show, Vanderpump Rules: Jax & Brittany Take Kentucky, and The Valley. // 

Vanderpump Rules follows Lisa Vanderpump and the staff at her restaurants and bars (SUR Restaurant & Lounge, Pump Restaurant, and Tom Tom, in West Hollywood, California) as they work on building their futures in show business and become entangled in interpersonal drama. The show initially centered on new server Scheana and her relationships with established employees Kristen Doute, Katie Maloney, Tom Sandoval, Stassi Schroeder, and Jax Taylor. (wikipedia)

• • •

I gotta believe that Neville noticed that VANDERPUMP RULES was a perfect grid-spanner, thought "huh, how can I turn that into something," saw the "VR" initials, which immediately brought to mind VR HEADSETs ... and here we are. It will surprise no one that VANDERPUMP RULES is a NYTXW debut. It will surprise at least a few people that VANDERPUMP RULES is anything at all, but ... it has run for 12 (!!!) seasons, so its validity as an answer, even as a Monday answer, is hard to question. I think 99% of so-called "reality TV" is a scourge, that it's dehumanizing and fraudulent and pretty much got us the government we have now. I also think VR HEADSETs look ridiculous and can't believe anyone would voluntarily wear one. Reality TV ... Virtual Reality ... pass and pass! But hey, I don't make the rules (Vanderpump or otherwise) and so I accept that many things I don't care for will seep into my grids. Luckily, VANDERPUMP RULES is an amazing name that's fun to say (and write—look how many times I've written it already!). That answer, along with a very clever revealer (making use of all its parts: "VR" and "head" and "set"!), elevates this above most initial-based themes I've seen. But still, at its core, it's just an initial-based theme, and most of the fill is pretty short, mostly blah, and particularly heavy on the repeaters (PSST AGASP EKE ESS ASEA RAVI EWAN ERMA OHO OHARE etc.). So you take the good you take the bad you take them both and there you have: three stars. Very much OK. 

[check out that VR HEADSET!]

My Downs-only solve was ... interesting. I made an inexplicable typo early on that made the NW way harder than it should've been. I meant to write in STARVE at 4D: "Feed a cold, ___ a fever" (dubious medical advice), but I somehow managed to write in SGARVE, which made TOOT impossible to see / infer, and since I wasn't 100% sure about COCO and absolutely could not come up with ROOT, that NW corner was something I had to come back to. I also wasn't entirely sure what a VOCAL REST was, though I knew I'd heard the phrase before. It's exactly what the clue says, exactly what it appears to mean—a period of time during which a singer rests their voice. As I was solving, I thought maybe it had a more technical meaning, something to do with musical notation, but no. I made an inference error on the second themer when I imagined that the first word would be VOLCANO, not VOLCANIC, and turned that answer into VOLCANO CREST. Is that a thing? I feel like that's what the rim of a volcano should be called. But no, wrong, not the answer the puzzle was looking for. Had DANCE before TWERK (13D: Do some booty-shaking) and MAC (!?) before RIG (9D: 18-wheeler), so the NE corner got a little ugly for me as well. After I got out of the top part of the grid, though, everything else came together very quickly. But again, I knew VANDERPUMP RULES was a thing and I also knew PENTATONIX was a thing (31D: Grammy-winning a cappella group famous for their Christmas albums). If the clue is to be believed, PENTATONIX is "famous" for their Christmas albums, but I still think some solvers are going to be unaware of them, and this could make the puzzle a bit tougher (esp. for Downs-only solvers, who might decide that PENATONIC / SECTS looks like a perfectly good solution).

Bullets:

• 2D: Word before beer or after square (ROOT) — these clues have always been my nemesis. My brain just goes "nope, won't do it, keep going, we'll get it from crosses." And then I'm like "come on brain, we can do this!" and it just sits there shaking its head, mulish. The cruel irony is that I adore ROOT beer and all things ROOT beer-flavored.
• 3D: Pixar film with the Oscar-winning song "Remember Me" (COCO) — every time I'm faced with a four-letter animated film, I just write in COCO and hope for the best. Sorry, ELIO and SOUL and whatever else is out there!
• 9D: 18-wheeler (RIG) — as I say, I wrote in MAC here at first. The truck brand is MACK, with a "K." I don't think Mac has made an 18-wheeler yet. But who knows what ridiculous horrors the future holds!
• 18D: Spinks who defeated Muhammad Ali (LEON) — wrote this in effortlessly, but somewhat guiltily, thinking "is anyone under 50 going to remember this???" Those Spinks/Ali bouts occurred just as my sports consciousness was developing (1978). Spinks beat Ali in February, and then the rematch happened only seven months later—Ali won that one. But if you weren't around for those bouts, I wouldn't expect you to know Spinks, as boxing has faded dramatically in popularity in the intervening half century, which means the history of boxing is not as In The Air as it once was.

• 12D: "Peanuts" or "Pickles" (COMIC) — I think I tried STRIP here briefly (before COMIC? what the hell, brain!?). Missed opportunity here to do a crossreference clue: ["Garfield," e.g.] paired with [Garfield, e.g.] at 63D (CAT). But maybe those clues would've been too, uh, subtle (i.e. vague) for a Monday.

[Like Ali ... the Greatest]

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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A schooner has at least two of them / WED 10-1-25 / Splinter in "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," e.g. / Power to remove a nomination for eviction on "Big Brother”

Constructor: Neville Fogarty

Relative difficulty: Easy (not putting my time bc I solved on paper)

THEME: Country-themed letter banks with cute clues — A letter bank is similar to an anagram, but less constrained, because you can repeat letters. 

Theme answers:

• [Elite soldier from GERMANY] for ARMY RANGER
• While an army ranger is not in fact from Germany, every letter in the answer (A, R, M, Y, N, G, and E) is found in (thus comes "from") the word GERMANY
• [Vessel for cooking rice from NEPAL] for PAELLA PAN
• [Sci-fi attack from SLOVENIA] for ALIEN INVASION
• [Fighting style from OMAN] for MANO A MANO
• [Seasonal precipitation from SURINAME] for SUMMER RAIN

Word of the Day: "Big Brother" (Power to remove a nomination for eviction on "Big Brother" for VETO) —

The show broadly follows the premise of other versions, in which a group of contestants, known as "houseguests", live together in a specially constructed house that is isolated from the outside world and compete for a cash prize of $750,000. The houseguests are continuously monitored during their stay by live television cameras as well as personal audio microphones. Throughout the course of the competition, houseguests are evicted by being voted out of the competition.

• • •

Hi squad, and welcome to a Malaika MWednesday! I found this to be an incredibly classic puzzle-- there's no Gotcha! or zany gimmick, it's just a well-executed take on a known form of wordplay. There have been plenty of letter bank puzzles before (I learned about the concept of a letter bank from crosswords!), and this one adds another layer by using countries specifically. One thing about a letter bank is that the bank (so in this case, GERMANY, NEPAL, etc.) cannot have any repeat letters. Immediately I feel the need to know how many countries have repeat letters (and thus would not have worked for this theme) but I am too tired to figure it out right now.

The clue [Shower affection (on)] made me think of this

Forcing the banks to be countries wasn't just a random constraint. It also means you get a cute double meaning when you read the clues. I think the styling they used gave too much away, but I suppose the bank would have to be capitalized.... I acknowledge that [Elite soldier from Germany] feels wrong. I preferred the clues that were completely factually wrong (like for PAELLA PAN, which is absolutely not from Nepal) because they made you do a little double take. More..... puzzling, if you will.

I like when I know things about the constructor, and then see threads of that in the puzzle. For example, I'm pretty sure Neville is a big Competition Reality TV Guy (Neville, chime in if I'm wrong here), so I guess the reference to "Big Brother" came from there. Of course, it doesn't always work like that! I had a puzzle where many solvers thanked me for a clue that used some particularly girly twenty-something slang and I had to reveal that the editors had contributed that particular clue.

Bullets:

• [Chinese monastery known for its style of kung fu] for SHAOLIN — I did not know this at all, and only know the name "Shaolin Fantastic" from a character on the short-lived but awesome TV show "The Get Down"
  
• [Candy brand with a Big Cup variety] for REESES — I love candy and I love the specific niche candies. Big Cup isn't that niche but it's more niche than a regular Reese's. My favorite weird candy is probably the giant chewy SweeTarts. I also adore Nerds Gummy Clusters which I think have gained a bit of a cult following in recent years.
• [Online subscription service since 2016] for ONLYFANS — lol I cannot believe he got this into an NYT puzzle. And referring to it as an "online subscription service" is simply diabolical. Legend.

xoxo Malaika

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Operating system from Bell Labs / THU 11-26-20 / 1992 biopic starring Jack Nicholson / Early TV network that competed with NBC and CBS / Precursor of rocksteady / 2019 voice role for Beyoncé

Constructor: Neville Fogarty

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (something under 5)

THEME: LONG (71A: Word interpreted literally in completing four of this puzzle's answers) — Across answers are all two-word phrases beginning with "LONG," but instead of appearing in the grid, "LONG" is represented literally; that is, the word following "Long" is actually, physically made long by having each letter stretched over the length of two squares instead of the usual one: 

Theme answers:

• VVOOWWEELL (18A: Oboe or flute sound) (i.e. "long vowel")
• IISSLLAANNDD (29A: Home to around eight million Americans) (i.e. "Long Island")
• WWIINNDDEEDD (47A: Circumlocutory) (i.e. "long-winded")
• JJOOHHNNSS (61A: Some winter wear) (i.e. "long johns")

Word of the Day: ANNA of Arendelle (Disney heroine) (57D) —

Anna of Arendelle (/ˈɑːnə/) is a fictional character who appears in Walt Disney Animation Studios' 53rd animated film Frozen and its sequel Frozen II. She is voiced by Kristen Bell as an adult. At the beginning of the film, Livvy Stubenrauch and Katie Lopez provide her speaking and singing voice as a young child, respectively. Agatha Lee Monn portrayed her as a nine-year-old (singing). In Frozen II, Hadley Gannaway provided her voice as a young child while Stubenrauch is the archive audio.

Created by co-directors Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck, Anna is loosely based on Gerda, a character from the Danish fairytale "The Snow Queen" by Hans Christian Andersen. In the Disney film adaptation, Anna is depicted as the princess of Arendelle, a fictional Scandinavian kingdom, and the younger sister of Princess Elsa (Idina Menzel), who is the heiress to the throne and possesses the elemental ability to create and control ice and snow. When Elsa exiles herself from the kingdom after inadvertently sending Arendelle into an eternal winter on the evening of her coronation, fearless and faithful Anna is determined to set out on a dangerous adventure to bring her sister back and save both her kingdom and her family. (wikipedia)

• • •

Delighted to see this byline today (my birthday), as Neville is one of the loveliest people I know in the entire world of crosswords. This is an absolutely solid little ROMP (17A: Play like a puppy), even if it does have two elements that notoriously annoy the heck out of me, i.e. a [See notes] instruction when I open the puzzle file, and also just the word NATANT, yuck, why does it exist, kill it (32D: Swimming). Anyway, the puzzle notes tell me that:

In the print version of this puzzle, every two squares in 18-, 29-, 47- and 61-Across are joined as one.

So instead of writing in the letters twice, as I've had to, you can just write them in once, and draw them all fun-house mirrory (i.e. "long"). Since I never read puzzle notes before I solve, I was left to piece together why there were repeating letters, why the first themer started VVOO-. After not being able to make anything out of it, I decided to just test the two-letter theory, so when I got a "W" I put in another "W" and so on. That led me to "VOWEL," and that led me to grasping the theme (the "o"s and "u" in the words "oboe" and "flute" are long vowels). The themers were easier thereafter, obviously, and each one easier than the next, it seemed. There wasn't much pizzazz outside the theme itself, but there was also very little garbage (NATANT notwithstanding), and I liked the cute little nod to the actual holiday that it is today, in addition to my birthday. Happy Thanksgiving! (40A: Celebrated Thanksgiving, say = FEASTED). 

Neville tells me that this puzzle is really a secret tribute to actress Shelley LONG of "Troop Beverly Hills" fame. He didn't actually say that, but I want to believe that subconsciously, that is what he was trying to do here. 

Ironically, the one part of this puzzle that was not a ROMP for me was the ROMP section. I wanted GATE at 1A: Info for an air traveler, but then Could Not make the first two Downs happen off the "G" and "A," so figured GATE was wrong. [Mystery writer, for short] is a cute but Brutal clue for ANON. (if the name of a writer is unknown, i.e. a mystery, then the writer is anonymous, or ANON.). I also had --EASY at 20A: Experiencing agita (UNEASY) and wanted only QUEASY. The most unlikely thing to happen today was the first thing I put into the grid was UNIX (14A: Operating system from Bell Labs). LOL I am pretty tech-stupid but somehow my brain was like "it's UNIX, put it in, *do it*!" and my brain was right. Had the usual LAVS v LOOS trouble (7D: Places to go in England), and then some EWE v. SOW confusion (9D: Female on a farm). I have never seen "Frozen" (daughter was too old by then to be overrun by the phenomenon), so the whole ANNA clue was actually baffling to me. I enjoyed remembering "Happy Days," and remembering Potsy in particular (31D: Actor Williams of "Happy Days" = ANSON). In case it's not clear, the first letter in "Gym," the "G," is a SOFT G, unlike the HARD G that starts GATE, GURU, gag order, or Gary Cooper. I hope you have a lovely, feastful day. Mwah!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

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Liable to snoop / TUES 5-26-20 / In scoring position, say / "Straight Outta Compton" group / Bamboozles

Hi, everyone! It's Clare, back again for this last Tuesday in May. I hope you're all doing well! I've been mostly just trying to relax these last few weeks since my law school finals ended. Quarantine for me has basically been: 12 million card games, 17 loaves of bread, nine hikes (including a fun 14.5-miler with some rock climbing involved!), and three animals driving me up the wall. I was looking forward to some mental stimulation from this puzzle, but...

Constructor: Neville Fogarty

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: BODIES OF WATER (35A: What the ends of 17-, 21-, 55- and 60-Across end in) — the end word of each of the four theme answers is a body of water.

Theme answers:

• COLIN FIRTH (17A: Best actor winner for "The King's Speech")
• ARTHUR LAKE (21A: Actor who played Dagwood Bumstead in film, radio and TV)
• BILLY OCEAN (55A: Singer with the 1984 #1 hit "Caribbean Queen")
• MICHAEL BAY (60A: Pearl Harbor director, 2001)

Word of the Day: ARTHUR LAKE —

Arthur Lake (born Arthur Silverlake Jr.) was an American actor known best for bringing Dagwood Bumstead, the bumbling husband of Blondie, to life in film, radio and television. He portrayed the Blondie comic strip character in twenty-eight Blondie films produced by Columbia Pictures from 1938 to 1950. He was also the voice of Dagwood on the radio series, which ran from 1938 to 1950, earning a star for him on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. (Wiki)

• • •

I can think of almost nothing to say about this puzzle — the theme was run-of-the-mill, the fill was mostly boring, and there were a lot of obscure names. That's all I need to say, right? Cool.

OK, I guess I can say a bit more. This puzzle felt like it came from someone with quarantine-brain, even though it's probably been in the backlog for a while — it just had no real pizzazz to it. I think my feelings about the puzzle as a whole are best summarized by the way I felt when I saw the clue for 61D: Letter after kay. Seriously? That simple? Give me something more interesting, please, I beg of you!

Anyway... the puzzle as a whole felt quite boring and also fairly hard, mostly because of the names used in the theme. While I knew COLIN FIRTH and MICHAEL BAY, the two other themers just don't feel particularly relevant in today's world. The first thing that slowed me down with the theme was that I didn't know a "firth" was a body of water. Then, I didn't know who ARTHUR LAKE was (he went off the air on radio in 1950...), so I had to piece his name together from the downs; and, I didn't know BILLY OCEAN. So... that was pretty hard. I also feel like we've seen this kind of theme a million times before — and will see it a million times again: A group of celebrities with names that can be grouped into a vague category.

I finished this puzzle and looked back through to find something — anything — that I found remotely interesting. I've concluded that some of the longer downs in the puzzle (BRASILIA; OUTCLASS; NECKWEAR) were just fine. And, I think the best thing about the whole puzzle was 47D: Doll that ran for president for the first time in 1992 as BARBIE. That's at least a fun tidbit. Other than that, the fill was just sort of there and taking up space.


Bullets:

• KRIS Jenner (20A) in a crossword puzzle? No, thank you!
• I had no idea that an average HAT SIZE was 7 1/4 (42A) — I'm not sure I ever needed to know this but I suppose it's useful information. Bruce Bochy (former manager of my San Francisco Giants) has a hat size of 8 1/8. Dude has a noggin.
• Here's BALOO singing "The Bare Necessities" to liven things up a bit:
• And, because COLIN FIRTH is on the brain, here's an amazing scene of him in the "Pride and Prejudice" miniseries:

(And, if you like that scene, I'd highly recommend the life-changing 2005 movie version of "Pride and Prejudice," as well)

With that, I'm signing off. Hope you all stay safe and happy (and six feet apart!)

Signed, Clare Carroll — Barbie 2020

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Neighbor on TV's Bewitched / THU 12-5-19 / TV show with three stars / Host Tyler of Whose Line Is It Anyway / Media protector introduced in '80s

Constructor: Neville Fogarty

Relative difficulty: Medium (6:03)

THEME: OVER! — circled squares each contain a letter which, when followed by "OVER," form the front ends of the theme answers (that they are, literally, over, i.e. on top of):

Theme answers:

• (M) over S AND SHAKERS (20A: Power players)
• (S) over EIGN STATE (30A: Any member of the United Nations)
• (C) over ED BRIDGES (49A: Wooden crossings that provide protection from the weather)
• (G) over NMENT AGENCY (58A: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, for one)

Word of the Day: BALTO (64A: Celebrated husky) —

Balto (1919 – March 14, 1933) was a Siberian Husky and sled dog who led his team on the final leg of the 1925 serum run to Nome, in which diphtheria antitoxin was transported from Anchorage, Alaska, to Nenana, Alaska, by train and then to Nome by dog sled to combat an outbreak of the disease. Balto was named after the Sami explorer Samuel Balto. Balto rested at the Cleveland Zoo until his death on March 14, 1933, at the age of 14. After he died, his body was stuffed and kept in the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, where it remains today. (wikipedia)

• • •

If there had been any way for to grasp what was going on before I was finished, maybe I would've enjoyed this. The gimmick is certainly clever. But from a solving standpoint, I was just filling in long Across answers with nonsense I didn't get, so that even though I completed it in a regular old Thursday time, the feeling was ... a bad one. I really wish the clues had been even a little more helpful. Usually in a puzzle like this, or in a rebus, I eventually hit an answer that makes me realize "Aha, *this* is what is going on!" That moment just never came today. Clues were all so vague as to be useless, or so bizarrely worded (see that ED BRIDGES clue) that, well, also useless. I started out wondering what SAND SHAKERS were and then things really went to hell. Ending up with EIGN STATE was just demoralizing. I saw the circled squares, but they just seemed randomly strewn about to me. I have no idea how I ended up solving it successfully in a respectable time. I guess that's the sign of a puzzle that, in all other respects, is well made. Fill is not showy, but it'll do. The theme just missed me. I can respect the construction, but I can't rewrite history and say that solving this was fun. ALAS.


Aside from, you know, never grasping the theme concept, there were two major slow-downs for me. First (and this is theme-related), I had E-GN-T--- for [Any member of the United Nations and I genuinely thought it was something (EGG?) NATION, which, now that I look at the clue again, I see was never going to fly. I guess when you get desperate, you forget that clue words can't actually be answer words. ALAS. Honestly, EIGN STATE was sooo rough for me. The other slow-down was HORN for HONK (54A: Traffic signal?). Weird how a little (plausible) thing like that can throw a wrench in things. I honestly broke down halfway through this thing and had to resort to roaming the vast empty areas of the south looking for any kind of toehold (which I finally got thanks to my good old friend John OATES (55D: Hall's singing partner)). Oh, and I just blanked on "ANNABEL LEE," even with ANNA in the grid; in fact, *because* ANNA was in the grid—since it's a complete name in and of itself, my brain didn't consider it might be part of a larger name. If I'd taken a few moments to hum the basic rhythm of the poem to myself, I probably would've hit on the title sooner, but when I'm solving I don't like to stop to do ... anything if I don't have to. No idea who ABNER was on "Bewitched." Can't even picture him. . . oh, looks like ABNER Kravitz was married to Gladys, who would always see the magic happening next door and then tell her husband ABNER to come look, but by then there would be no magic. Wah Waaaah. Even looking at ABNER I don't remember him. Gladys, though, is hard to forget:


Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Rabbit's Tail / THU 10-25-18 / Dutch Artist Jan van der ___ / Stage name of rapper Sandra Denton / Muslim ascetic

Constructor: Neville Fogarty

Relative difficulty: Medium (4:38)

THEME: "SEE"  — the "See" of a cross-referenced clue is combined with the relevant fill to provide a clue for the corresponding longer theme material

Theme answers:

• LOST LIQUID (18A: See 17-Across / "See PAGE" [17A: Footnote info])  
• DO A SLOW BURN (16A: See 29-Across / "See THE" [29A: Common article])
• GO UP AND DOWN (46A: See 45-Across / "See SAW" [45A: Oft-repeated words])
• IN SEARCH OF (59A: See 61-Across / "See KING" [61A: Bed selection])

Word of the Day: MEER (4D: Dutch artist Jan van der ___) —

Jan Vermeer van Haarlem, or Jan van der Meer II (1656 – May 28, 1705^[1]) was a Dutch Golden Age painter from Haarlem. A landscape painter primarily, he ... signed his works "J v der meer de jonge" (Jan van der Meer the Younger). (Wikipedia)

• • •

Guest blogger Matt (of the triple-stack Saturday back in July) back today, as Rex is grading papers.

I had a feeling we'd have a feistier Thursday when I saw the byline; Neville is one of the organizers and constructors of the excellent Indie 500 tournament, held in June in Washington, DC. What we've got here is a fun subversion of cross-referencing conventions, as the "See" part of theme clues isn't setting up a two-part answer, but a combination of "see" with the answer to generate a new clue. Without rehashing each, I'll highlight GO UP AND DOWN, which we get from see-SAW (45A: Oft-repeated words).

All that explained, I didn't get the theme at all while solving, and just decided to brute-force through it. LIAM (though I couldn't remember all three Hemsworths and worried I was picking the wrong non-Chris brother) TETES FRAT FAQIR were quick entries across the top, and I had to chuckle at ROULETTE (11D: Rigged game in "Casablanca"), which would have stumped me for a while had it not come up with the same reference at either the Indie 500 or Lollapuzzoola this summer. At that time, I tried to piece together a card game from about half the letters for a while. Casablanca is one of those movies I know I should see, but in my life it only comes up in crosswords and by now I've ironed out the difference between Casablanca's ILSA and Young Frankenstein's INGA so I keep kicking the can down the road.

Everything is pretty straightforward (upon review, dare I say 'bland'?) through the top half or so -- I enjoyed TELECOM and ECOLAW (6D: Anti-fracking legislation, e.g.) because I dropped them in off their initial letters, but they're not terribly snappy, and MEER feels like a stretch, relevance-wise -- but I needed NUDGED, MORITA, and NOCARBS (42D: One dieting strategy) to get me into the short stuff and make sense of the bottom two themers, where I ended.

The more I look at this, the more I see rough fill, but figuring out the theme after the fact was a great AHA moment that I figure would have been even better mid-solve, literally every down entry intersects with theme material, and I'd rather have more creativity on Thursdays than less. The clear highlight for me is 40A: What may blossom from buds? for BROMANCE. A little twisted without being tortured, a little corny, but gettable without too much pause and it brought me a smirk in a puzzle that had a good amount of straightforward cluing for the back half of the week.



Bullets:

• SCUT (38D: Rabbit's tail) — You can see above that this is where I finished, having never seen the word before. Of course, I had no sense of the theme to lean on the crossing until near the end. 
• SNARFED (43D: Gobbled up) — SNARFED seems to be much more common than SCARFED in puzzles, but that doesn't stop me from putting the -C- in every dang time. 
• ANGOLA (3D: African country that's a member of OPEC) — Just once or twice I'd like to see this clued as the notorious Louisiana prison built on a former plantation, its attached museum and yearly rodeo inches away from creating exhibits out of people in cages, but I'll save my energy and look for that in some other outlet's puzzle.   

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Arcade hoops game / SUN 5-13-18 / 1940s vice president wallace / shroud of secrecy idiomatically / Southernmost of lesser antilles / Napa Valley vintner Robert / Instrument plucked with mesrab / Model page known as queen of pinups / Command of Captain Jean-Luc Picard

Constructor: Neville Fogarty and Erik Agard

Relative difficulty: Medium (11:51)

THEME: "Love at First Site" — familiar names and phrases clue ("?"-style) as if they were fake dating websites:

Theme answers:

• 22A: Good name for a deep kissers' dating site? (FRENCH CONNECTION)
• 51A: Good name for a dating site full of hot dudes? (STUD FINDER)
• 57A: Good name for a dating site of massage therapists? (RUBBER MATCH)
• 76A: Good name for an extreme sports dating site? (ACTION ITEMS)
• 83A: Good name for a non-monogamist dating site? (OPEN FLAMES)
• 115A: Good name for a dating site for lovers of natural foods? (ORGANIC CHEMISTRY)
• 15D: Good name for a carpentry dating site? (BOARD MEETING)
• 60D: Good name for a "High Noon"-themed dating site? (WESTERN UNION)

Word of the Day: action items —

In management, an action item is a documented event, task, activity, or action that needs to take place. Action items are discrete units that can be handled by a single person. (wikipedia)

• • •

I like the theme concept here a lot. As usual, I wish the clues were even more outlandish. Wacky it all the way to 11. For instance, I was very, very disappointed in the clue for RUBBER MATCH. I mean ... a fake "dating site" theme and you've got "rubber" in your hand (?) and you go "massage therapist"? Come on, man. I had the RUBBER part and a few letters in the second word and was like "RUBBER RANCH!? What the hell is that? That sounds ... insane!" Who is SEAN BEAN? Oh, looks like he was in GOT, which explains my not knowing him. There was a time in the mid-2000s when it seemed like the puzzle was asking me to know a lot about "Ally McBeal," and I refused. I somehow continue to refuse to know anything about GOT, possibly because I didn't like the first book and so stopped reading and don't care. I hear the TV show stands up well on its own. Someday, I may find out. Someday. Anyway,  SEAN BEAN! (pronounced "Seen Bon"). Cool. Once again I have seen ridiculously fast times posted on Twitter (well, two, anyway) and so I don't know ... my time was average. I had a bunch of trouble parsing, or even seeing, a bunch of the themers, and the cluing was sufficiently tricky in parts that I never felt like I got good traction. Enjoyed it, but definitely had to work for it.
I just stared at ACTION ITEMS for a bit there. No idea what ... those ... are. I was like "cool, ACTION COMICS ... nope, doesn't fit. OK I'm out of ACTION phrases." Also had ORGANIC CHEMICALS (?) at first. I hadn't really absorbed the whole theme thing very well, apparently. First themer I got was WESTERN UNION and I somehow assumed the answers would all be businesses. But no. I had such terrible trouble right off the bat, in the NW, that I thought something terribly tricky was going on. Turns out I had just one answer wrong (SITCOM for SATIRE at 18A: "The Simpsons" or "Futurama") and that alone destroyed my chances up there. I suspected both ARCS and MEH and should've guessed NBA JAM up there at 1A: Arcade hoops game, but I dunno, the SITCOM thing just got me mired. Totally blanked on JINPING (4D: Chinese leader Xi). More name trouble: no idea who PAIGE Davis or TESSA Thompson is. Figured them out from crosses. Names! Especially current pop culture names! Soooooo exclusionary. Or inclusionary, I guess, if you want those specific things and also really pay attention to cast lists. Other name I didn't know: HENRY (38D: 1940s vice president Wallace). Also TRISH ... is that a Nixon clue? (67A: Patty alternative?). So weird. I don't think I understand how the daughter is an "alternative" to the wife (???) (LOL my wife just explained to me that "Patty" and "TRISH" are both shortened forms of the same name, "Patricia"; I miss my Nixon reading already). I had 102D: Certain computer whiz as TECHY (var.? ) because I had the "Y" and ... that's all I could come up with. [Male computer whiz] might've been a little clearer as a clue for IT GUY. Still, overall, a very decent puzzle. I never hit speeds so fast I felt like I was drunk, but I did, finally, have a feeling I could be someone, be someone.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Poem greeting the dawn / FRI 3-9-18 / Musical gir who cain't say no / 2008 Bond girl Kurylenko / Thrill starts with grille / Animated character who graduated from Dogwarts University / Wizard of Oz farmhand / Tom Sawyer's half brother / Cause of bad dreams in modern lingo

Constructor: Neville Fogarty and Doug Peterson

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: AUBADE (2D: Poem greeting the dawn) —

An aubade is a morning love song (as opposed to a serenade, which is in the evening), or a song or poem about lovers separating at dawn. It has also been defined as "a song or instrumental composition concerning, accompanying, or evoking daybreak". (wikipedia)

• • •

Both these constructors are friends of mine. Neville is perhaps best known for coming in second (with his mother) to me and my wife in the Pairs Division of last year's Lollapuzzoola crossword tournament. Doug, of course, is L.A.'s Batman. I was soooo happy to see their names on the puzzle, and they don't really make bad puzzles. It's nice that there are constructors about whom this can be said. I am usually very much on their wavelength(s), though today, right out of the gate, the whole thing went a little KABLOOEY (great answer, btw) (7D: Bad way to go). I wrote in RAT PACK right away and then hit the Downs. Me: "1D: One going against the grain? Let's see starts with "R" ... RIPSAW! (!?). OK, great. Next: 2D: Poem greeting the dawn. Starts with "A" ... ooh, I know this one ... dawn ... I think it's ... not AURORA, 'cause that means "dawn," but ... AURORE! Yes, that's it!" (no, that's not it; that's a thing from Harry Potter). I went through at least three more spellings of AUBADE before I got there, including AUDABE, all of which is very ironic considering I teach Donne's "The Sunne Rising" all the time, and *apparently* it is a paradigmatic example of the AUBADE. AUBADE, you devil!

A Juiced (up) AUBADE

Didn't read the "alphabetically" part of 17A: First world capital, alphabetically, and thought, "well, that's an ... odd ... way to clue ABU DHABI." Anyway, once I got the back ends of all the Acrosses in the NW, I slingshotted out of there and bounced around the rest of the grid like it was a Wednesday, for the most part. Slight slowdown in the NE because ADO ANNIE (like most things "musical") is out of my wheelhouse and even though I've seen her name before, I sure couldn't parse it here (12D: Musical "girl who cain't say no"). Also thought "Comeback Kid" was Joe BIDEN (!?) or ... who's that sad sack Democrat of yesteryear? ... Oh, right, Joe LIEBERMAN. Football's MONTANA wasn't even in my thoughts there (13D: Joe known as "The Comeback Kid"). I didn't know PROZAC was used to treat O.C.D. I'm glad AUTISM is in the grid, though it seems like the kind of thing people might be quite sensitive about, cluing-wise (31D: Special-education challenge). This clue seemed straightforward enough to me. The last stumbling block was literally the last block I filled in—I had SOUSED for 57A: Juiced (up). Great answer for [Juiced]; not so great for [Juiced (up)]. The answer was SOUPED (totally different kind of "juiced." And done!


Huge applause for NIGHTMARE FUEL (15D: Cause of bad dreams, in modern lingo) and, weirdly, NO SLOUCH (I say "weirdly" because it's such a strange thing to see standing on its own, and it gave me parsing fits, *but* ... when I got it, I thought a. original, b. perfect) (37D: Someone who's pretty darn good). I also loved the clue on MARSH (50A: Rail center?), though it also gave me fits—see, it's not that I don't like to be challenged, it's that when I'm challenged, I like the ultimate result to be Satisfying. Silver medalist Fogarty and Dark Knight Peterson get that.

Explainers:

• a "rail" is a bird one might find in a MARSH
• GROMIT is the dog from the "Wallace & GROMIT" animated films
• "Helicases are a class of enzymes vital to all living organisms. Their main function is to unpackage an organism's genes." (wikipedia)

Questions:

• can't a PAIR be a *very* exciting "poker holding," depending on context?

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Horse breed known dressage / TUE 5-30-17 / Rogen "Neighbors" / Simoleon / "Storage Wars" network / Justice Gorsuch / Boxer Drago / Madeline "Blazing Saddles" / Ex Trump / Religion Five Pillars /

Constructor: Neville Fogarty

Relative difficulty: Average

You might've thought it was by Charlotte

THEME: GREY MATTER — Each theme entry contains a word that, when paired with the word GREY (indicated by shaded squares in the grid), makes up the name of a person (two real men, two fictional women) whose last name is Grey.

Theme answers:

• LIPIZZANER [ZANE GREY] (17A: Horse breed known for dressage [western writer])
• MILK OF MAGNESIA [AGNES GREY] (27A: Upset stomach remedy [Brontë governess])
• REAR LIT [EARL GREY] (39A: Like a silhouette [19th-century U.K. prime minister])
• HAMMERED IT HOME [MEREDITH GREY] (46A: Really made the point [TV surgeon played by Ellen Pompeo])
• GREY MATTER (63A: Brains ... or this puzzle's four shaded names?)

Word of the Day: LIPIZZANER (17A: Horse breed known for dressage) —

The Lipizzan or Lipizzaner (Czech: Lipicán, Croatian: Lipicanac, Hungarian: Lipicai, Italian: Lipizzano, Slovene: Lipicanec), is a breed of horse closely associated with the Spanish Riding School of Vienna, Austria, where they demonstrate the haute école or "high school" movements of classical dressage, including the highly controlled, stylized jumps and other movements known as the "airs above the ground." The horses at the Spanish Riding School are trained using traditional methods that date back hundreds of years, based on the principles of classical dressage. The Lipizzan breed dates back to the 16th century, when it was developed with the support of the Habsburg nobility. The breed takes its name from one of the earliest stud farms established, located near the Karst Plateau village of Lipica (spelled "Lipizza" in Italian), in modern-day Slovenia. The breed has been endangered numerous times by warfare sweeping Europe, including during the War of the First Coalition, World War I and World War II. The rescue of the Lipizzans during World War II by American troops was made famous by the Disney movie Miracle of the White Stallions. Along with the Disney movie, Lipizzans have also starred or played supporting roles in many movies, TV shows, books and other media. (Wikipedia)

• • •

Laura here, guest-posting for Rex, and solving on West Coast time. It's still light out and my laptop and I are outside. (I am considering moving to California just to get the puzzle at 7pm on weeknights.) This one was quite a treat, though I suspect (and have already seen on Twitter) that there are a few entries that will stand out to solvers as somewhat more obscure than one would expect to find on a Tuesday. Case in point: LIPIZZANER, our Word of the Day, which I barely remembered from a brief tweenage obsession with horses. This was after I erased GOAT from 18D (Prize you don't want on "Let's Make a Deal"). (I was originally thinking of a probability puzzle called the Monty Hall problem.)

Let's get meta with an image from Rex's other blog

Of the GREYs referenced herein, I suspect ZANE will be the most familiar to solvers, some of whom may be only familiar with EARL GREY from his namesake tea. 

 

 "Tea, Earl Grey, hot": The Supercut

Bullets:

• 3D: Guitarist's key-changing aid (CAPO) — I was pleased to learn the term for the thing I have always referred to as "that clamp thingy on the neck of a guitar" (no musician, I). Also pleasing to see it clued as something other than "Mafia bigwig."
• 9D: Island wrap (SARONG) — Nothing, what sarong with you?!
• 57D: One side of a Stevenson character (HYDE) — Ya (or I) gotta like a puzzle that references the Rocky movies (6D: Boxer Drago of "Rocky IV" [IVAN]), Blazing Saddles (13D: Madeline KAHN), 1970s Broadway (15A: "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" musical [EVITA]), the BARD (51D: Shakespeare, for one), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Grey's Anatomy, and the youngest and arguably most obscure Brontë sister. Too bad Neville didn't clue DUNE (68A: Beach hill) as "Novel concerning the struggle for Arrakis."

 "Have I said too much?
There's nothing more I can think of to say to you."

Signed, Laura Braunstein, Sorceress of CrossWorld

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