Khan tract? / THU 10-31-24 / Throw hard, in modern slang / Pigeonry / Certain edible seedlings / Summer drink made from the fruits of two tropical trees / powder (manicure type) / "Duh!," in textspeak / What the puck is going on? / General during the Clone Wars / Like Polish, but not polish / BeBe's sister, in a gospel duo / Campbell of horror film fame / Graphic showing the status of a download, say

Constructor: Sarah Sinclair and Paolo Pasco

Relative difficulty: Medium (except that SE corner, yipes)

THEME: "MONSTER MASH" (34A: Halloween-themed hit, with a hint to four squares in this puzzle) — four monsters (a DEMON, a TROLL, an OGRE, and a GOLEM) are each "mashed" into a single square ... it's a monster rebus! Boo!

Theme answers:

• PRIDE MONTH / DESDEMONA (20A: June observance / 4D: "Othello" role)
• CRESCENT ROLL / TEA TROLLEY (22A: Pastry whose dough is used in making pigs in a blanket / 13D: Source of refreshments on a train to London)
• PROGRESS BAR / MICROGREENS (48A: Graphic showing the status of a download, say / 34D: Certain edible seedlings)
• MANGO LEMONADE / MONGOL EMPIRE (45A: Summer drink made from the fruits of two tropical trees / 35D: Khan tract?)

Word of the Day: DIP powder nails (40A: ___ powder (manicure type)) —

Dip powder nails is a technique in which you or a nail technician dusts or brushes a pigmented powder over your nails to create an opaque layer of color. It got its name because when you’re DIYing it at home, you can literally “dip” your nail into the jar of powder (more on the specifics below). Dip powder nails typically require a few coats of powder for opacity before you paint a liquid sealant painted on top to harden the powder. Finally, they're sealed with a top coat for shine. The result? A manicure that can last around three weeks without chipping or lifting. (cosmopolitan dot com)

• • •

[Apollo & DAPHNE]

Wow, yes. This puzzle. This is how you do a holiday puzzle. First of all, it's appearing on the actual holiday that it's celebrating—not one, or three, or however many days earlier, as sometimes happens—so that's nice. And luckily for me (and hopefully you) that day is Thursday, which means it's party time. It's pull-out-all-the-stops time, burn-this-mother-down time. Actually, it's a fairly simple concept. It's just a rebus puzzle, with monsters in the rebus squares. But what elevates this puzzle is ... well, lots of things. First of all, the perfect revealer. Has that song title ("MONSTER MASH") really been sitting around for well over half a century and no one (til now) had thought to use it as a revealer in a crossword puzzle? I gotta believe it's been attempted, somewhere, at some time, but not to my memory, not in the NYTXW, anyway. The song has been in the puzzle, of course—seven other times—but no one (apparently) had thought to build a theme around it, despite the fact that it seems to be crying out for rebus revealer status. 

But it isn't just that the revealer is perfect, it's that the puzzle unfolded in such an entertaining way, because the revealer only revealed so much. Sometimes, once you get a revealer, the puzzle becomes much easier to solve; I've often filled in all thematic material immediately upon getting the revealer or grokking the basic theme gimmick. But today ... well, first, I got the rebus pretty quickly; if you've ever seen, or read, or especially taught Othello (as I have), then it's possible that you noticed, or had it pointed out to you, that with Othello & Desdemona, "HELL" appears in his name and "DEMON" appears in hers. So I got DES(DEMON)A easy and thought "ooh, demons, cool," figuring I'd be seeing a bunch of demons today. But then the TROLL jumped out at me in the NE and I thought "OK, dang, we're gonna get all kinds of monsters ... cooler." And then I got the revealer and thought "damn ... damn that's just stupidly perfect." But even knowing the basic concept, I Still Had To Hunt Two More Monsters, and let me tell you, that last monster put up a fight. This is perhaps because the monster in question, the GOLEM, is ... not a Halloween monster? It's a figure from Jewish folklore, and since many Jews do not celebrate Halloween for religious or cultural reasons, GOLEM seems an unlikely guest at this party. But technically, a GOLEM is a kind of "monster," and all the revealer promises is that monsters will be mashed, not that all said monsters will be iconically associated with Halloween. And since the GOLEM did inspire Frankenstein's monster (which is very iconically Halloweeny!), judges say ... fair. Tough (as hell), but fair.

[It's time ... the official start of Christmas music season; sorry, I don't make the rules, it's Christmas season now]

I was so mad at CRESCENT—I practically shouted "they're called CRESCENT rolls!"—that when the TROLL finally popped out of his hiding place, I felt like the puzzle was listening to me. It played a little joke on me. Got me mad about a problem that didn't actually exist and then shouted "gotcha!" Good one, puzzle. OGRE was weirdly easy to get. I think I had the MICR- part of MICR(OGRE)ENS and just started testing "O" monsters ... not many of those! OGRE was the first thing I thought of, and bam, in went the greens. It's the dang GOLEM that took forever. Why? Sigh, well, I had the MANGO- part of the two-part fruit drink thingie, but I'd written in MANGO, leaving me with MONG- for the opening of 35D: Khan tract? (that's "Khan" as in "Genghis" and "tract" as in "piece of land"). It's really *that* clue that kept GOLEM hidden for a while, because even after I'd worked out the back end of the answer (-IRE), I kept trying to make MONGOLIANEMPIRE work. Oh, and that clue on PROPER didn't help, yeesh. Without the word "noun" anywhere in the clue, it never ever occurred to me that you would refer to a word as PROPER. PROPER modifies "noun," or maybe "name," but without that cue, I kept looking for some specific property of Polish (the language), and getting nowhere. "I know there's a monster in here somewhere, dammit! What the hell kind of monster is an "olianemp"?! Eventually I tried MONGOL (rather than MONGOLIAN) EMPIRE, and boom, there it was. So MAN(GO LEM)ONADE crossing MON(GOL EM)PIRE was a PROPER train wreck. I was lucky enough to know YEET and DAPHNE and WHAM!, and I was done. Well and truly—and happily—done. Puzzle solved, monsters defeated. Good time had.

[BeBe's sister, in a gospel duo]

Notes and Explanations:

• 17A: "Duh!," in textspeak ("OBVS!") — this puzzle is ostentatiously slangy, with OBVS and YEET (60A: Throw hard, in modern slang) and TRASH (as clued) (10D: Just terrible, in slang). I'm guessing YEET was the most troublesome of the three for many. I am not a native YEET sayer, but I've seen it enough by now to not be surprised by it. This is the third YEET of the year, fifth all time (it debuted just last year).
• 24A: Common situations in time travel narratives (PARADOXES) — had the PARA- part and (since I already knew it was a monster rebus) wanted PARALLEL UNIVERSES but good luck finding the monster that will make that answer work. (I dare you to go to your next Halloween party as a Lleluniv!)
• 28A: Its cups aren't supposed to runneth over (BRA) — this made me laugh. 
• 36A: What the puck is going on? (RINK) — another perfect clue. At first I thought "shouldn't this be where the puck is...?'" But no, the RINK (surface) is what the puck is going (sliding) on.  
• 30A: Last word in the full title of Cervantes's most famous novel (MANCHA) — familiar to fans of the musical ... 

• 33A: Pigeonry (COTE) — I love the word "pigeonry." Sounds like the shenanigans that pigeons get up to. You know? Flying. Cooing. Pooping on statues. Your basic pigeonry.
• 48A: Graphic showing the status of a download, say (PROGRESS BAR) — had PROGRESS MAP here, for some reason. A MAP is also a "graphic" so it made sense to me in the moment, even if BAR is infinitely better in retrospect.
• 56A: Opposite of a jumbo shake? (TREMOR) — the puzzle is having fun. Not content to baffle you with hiding monsters, it also throws a lot of wacky clue curveballs at you. I appreciated the spirit of the whole thing. We even get bonus spooky content, just to Halloween things up a bit more: a haunted corn maze (dead END!); horror film star NEVE Campbell (of Scream fame); ominous FOGHORNS ... it sets a mood, this puzzle. Zany-spooky. I'm feeling it.

• 21D: Institution with A.T.M.s known as "Green Machines" (TD BANK) — no idea. Wait, I think my stepbrother works for them. I know he works for some bank, and commutes to Toronto several times a month. Hmmm. We don't have these banks near me. Not anywhere I have lived. Looks like the parent company is in fact Canadian. I only know the name because ... probably because of ads, or the naming rights on some stadium or something. Oh, and because they were recently in the news, not for good reasons (when are banks in the news for good reasons?): "On October 10, 2024, in a historic settlement with U.S. authorities, TD pleaded guilty and agreed to pay $3 billion in combined penalties for money laundering conspiracy over a decade, including failure to monitor trillions in potentially suspicious transactions annually, necessitating a four-year independent monitorship and comprehensive AML reforms." (wikipedia)
• 31D: Dating app for queer women (HER) — no idea. Luckily, not hard to infer. 
• 49D: 2016 election nickname (BERN) — as in Bernie Sanders. I forgot about all that "Feel the BERN" stuff. Seems fitting that the only "nickname" I can remember from that (TRASH) election is "JEB!" Which isn't even a nickname. Just a sad, failed slogan. The least efficacious exclamation point in electoral history. Please clap.

See you in November ...

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Restaurant chain with an avian mascot / SUN 7-28-24 / Negative Nancy words? / Letters after Lucasfilm / Cattle-driving dispute / Phenomenon allegorized in "The Crucible" / Raccoonlike mammal of China / Substance in a bagel-making "bath" / Rizal national hero of the Philippines / Teletubby with a repetitive name / Musical composition like the Gauri in Sikh tradition / Chain that offers obedience training classes / Spice Girl Chisholm, casually / Part of a woman's anatomy named for Dr. Ernst Gräfenberg

Constructor: Paolo Pasco

Relative difficulty: Easy (Ultra-Easy, maybe the easiest Sunday of all time)

THEME: "The Big Five-O"—a puzzle depicting the OLYMPIC FLAG (114A: This puzzle's subject) — Five olympic rings are represented by colored squares; every answer that forms a part of a ring has, as its first word/first part, the color of that ring:

BLUE:

• -PRINT (36A: Detailed plan of action)
• STATE (45D: Democratic stronghold)
• "BAYOU" (79A: Signature hit for Linda Ronstadt)
• -BIRDS (43D: Thy fly somewhere over the rainbow)

BLACK:

• MAGIC (38A: Malevolent sorcery)
• -MAILS (47D: Extorts from, in a way)
• OLIVE (81A: Supreme pizza topping)
• SHEEP (46D: Ostracized family member)

RED:

• ROBIN (40A: Restaurant chain with an avian mascot)
• SCARE (50D: Phenomenon allegorized in "The Crucible")
• ALERT (82A: "Danger! Danger!")
• PANDA (48D: Raccoonlike mammal of China)

YELLOW:

• PAGES (59A: Obsolescent book)
• BELLY (65D: Milquetoast)
• CARDS (98A: Results of some fouls in soccer)
• -STONE (63D: National park since 1872)

GREEN:

• GIANT (60A: Brand in the frozen food section)
• SALSA (69D: Dip made from tomatillos)
• -HOUSE (100A: What has a lot of room to grow?)
• RIVER (67D: Creedence Clearwater Revival song named after a place "where cool water flows")

Bonus themers:

• RING BEARER (17A: Wedding role ... or a description of 114-Across?)
• COLOR WHEEL (20A: Artist's diagram ... or one of five for 114-Across?)

Word of the Day: JOSÉ Rizal (28A: ___ Rizal, national hero of the Philippines) —

José Protasio Rizal Mercado y Alonso Realonda (Spanish: [xoˈse riˈsal, -ˈθal], Tagalog:[hoˈse ɾiˈsal]; June 19, 1861 – December 30, 1896) was a Filipino nationalist, writer and polymath active at the end of the Spanish colonial period of the Philippines. He is considered a national hero (pambansang bayani) of the Philippines. An ophthalmologist by profession, Rizal became a writer and a key member of the Filipino Propaganda Movement, which advocated political reforms for the colony under Spain.

He was executed by the Spanish colonial government for the crime of rebellion after the Philippine Revolution broke out; it was inspired by his writings. Though he was not actively involved in its planning or conduct, he ultimately approved of its goals which eventually resulted in Philippine independence.

Rizal is widely considered one of the greatest heroes of the Philippines and has been recommended to be so honored by an officially empaneled National Heroes Committee. However, no law, executive order or proclamation has been enacted or issued officially proclaiming any Filipino historical figure as a national hero. He wrote the novels Noli Me Tángere (1887) and El filibusterismo (1891), which together are taken as a national epic, in addition to numerous poems and essays. (wikipedia)

• • •

This is a clever and seemingly intricate construction—what with so much theme content, and so much of it interlocking, plus the revealer and the two bonus theme answers—but as a solving experience, it was pretty ... hollow, I guess. I mean, it was slight. It was like a mini, blown up to maxi proportions. Lots of five-letter answers, all of them extremely easy to suss out. Once you grok the concept—and it ain't hard—then chances are you can immediately get all or most of the way to here (as I did):

I got [BLACK]MAGIC, thought "Oh, is that it?," kept solving like normal for a bit, then thought, "What the hell..." and tried to get every answer in every ring. And succeeded. I had to think for a second about [GREEN]HOUSE (100A: What has a lot of room to grow?), but otherwise, everything went right in. When you just hand readers the first part of That many answers, a lot of the fun and All of the challenge goes right out the door. This is a bright, shiny thing, a good-looking thing, a cute thing, but it's not much of a puzzle. I mean, its purpose seems to be primarily decorative. There's nothing really to figure out. Filling in the answers almost feels beside the point. Superfluous. Even the revealer feels pretty redundant. It's obviously the OLYMPIC FLAG. I can see that. You're describing the obvious. So while this is well made, it feels like it's made for a child's placemat. A precocious child, I guess. But still. There's no heft to this. I neither enjoyed nor unenjoyed it. I hardly had the time to work up any feeling at all.

So, yeah, the Olympic Games started this week in Paris, so the puzzle is at least timely. I'm really struggling to find anything to say about it. The bonus themers are pretty clever, as puns go? Uh ... I like the BRA clue? (1A: Word following "push-up" that anagrams to a word following "pull-up") (it's "pull-up bar," which I assume you've figured out by now) (they can't say "bar" because BAR is an answer elsewhere in the puzzle) (65A: Cheers, for one). I was just thinking today how great Cheers was. Actually, I was remembering what a huge crush I had on Diane as a kid. Actually actually, what I was thinking about was the 1982 movie Night Shift, and how much Bruce Willis, in the first season of Moonlighting (which I've started rewatching) often appears to be channeling the voice and mannerisms and occasionally exact expressions of Michael Keaton's character (Bill) in Night Shift (a 1982 movie about two guys—Keaton and Henry Winkler who decide to run a prostitution ring out of a morgue). And then I thought of Shelley Long because she's also in Night Shift (as the quintessential "hooker with a heart of gold"). And then I thought of Cheers. And then I did this puzzle. And here we are. If Star Wars was the most formative moviegoing experience of my childhood, Night Shift was the most formative movie-watching experience of my adolescence—can't say "moviegoing" because I only ever saw it on "laser disc," which were those giant, LP-sized discs that were precursors to DVDs. My dad was always an early adopter of gadgetry. I mean, we had a damned Betamax player. We eventually got a VHS player, like normal people, but mostly, in the early/mid-80s, we watched movies on laser disc, and we watched Night Shift over and over and over and over. I'm sure (quite sure) the movie is dated and politically ... uh, questionable on many, many levels. But Michael Keaton in that movie was ... just ... iconic for me. Bill Murray and Steve Martin were the obvious comedy heroes of boys my age, but for me, in terms of movie performances, it was Keaton in Night Shift. The gold standard. "Call Starkist." If you know, you know. Anyway, as I was saying: BAR ... is an answer in this puzzle. 

Probably the most interesting answer in this puzzle is RANGE WAR (37D: Cattle-driving dispute). I like it because it's original and because it makes me think of old westerns, which I both love and love to hate (racism against Native Americans is *pretty* standard, as is rather cruel treatment of the stunt horses, but I love me some handsome dudes strutting around trying to outdude each other, especially if Angie Dickinson or Grace Kelly or Barbara Stanwyck or Joan Collins is nearby). I also like PAN-ARAB, TAKE THE BAIT, and "I'M HUNGRY!" (41D: What "Meow!" might mean) ("Kitties! I just fed you! You want more? OK. What? What is it, Ida? You want me to physically carry you to your food bowl? Hmm. Alright. Seems fair. Whatever you need"). Like I say, the puzzle is not poorly made. Not at all. It just didn't have any fight in it. I didn't know JOSÉ Rizal, but otherwise, there wasn't a single answer that gave me any real trouble. EAR CANAL, maybe a little, but that's it (83D: Channel that gets audio only?). 

Not sure about that "only" in the EAR CANAL clue. I guess in the sense of "not video," then yes, audio only. But it can also get, I dunno, pain, in circumstances. And wax. Definitely gets wax ("cerumen," it's called, I just learned) (don't click on that link if you don't want to see earwax, yikes, definite trigger warning there). Speaking of canals, on tonight's episode of The Love Boat (the back end of a two-parter from early in season 4), the Pacific Princess sailed through the Panama Canal. So many locks! So exciting! Donny Most! Erin Moran! Charlene Tilton! Peter Graves! Debbie bleeping Reynolds! So much fun. Well, except when Gopher got left behind in a Panamanian prison because police mistook him for an illegal drug dealer because Doc sent him ashore on a (legal) drug-buying errand in order to get Gopher out of the way so that Doc could have more time alone with the two comically, exaggeratedly, performatively flirty ladies (Dawn Wells! Ann Jillian!) who were the judges in some kind of wedding contest (it was a group wedding cruise, don't ask). But more on that another time. Don't worry. Gopher's fine.

Explainers:

• 9A: Israeli desert (NEGEV) — this sometimes appears as NEGEB. Never commit to that last letter without a crosscheck, even though it's far more likely to be NEGEV (32 appearances in the Shortz/Fagliano Era, versus only one for NEGEB (back in 2008))
• 28A: ___ Rizal, national hero of the Philippines (JOSÉ) — OK, back to this guy. Whenever I see a name like RIZAL (i.e. short, belonging to an allegedly famous person, completely unfamiliar to me), I think "Why haven't I seen this name in crosswords before?" Well, if you solve only the NYT crossword, then the last time you saw RIZAL would've been [drumroll] 1953! I was gonna say "that's a longggggg time between appearances," but of course RIZAL didn't appear today. JOSÉ did. I wonder if we'll ever see RIZAL again. If you remember solving the puzzle with the one and only appearance of RIZAL, you have an amazing memory, especially for someone who is at least 90 years old, congrats.
• 22A: Multipiece furniture purchases (OTTOMAN SETS) — this answer felt normal to me but my wife insisted it was weird so I ended up looking up OTTOMAN SETS last night on my phone just before bedtime and ... I guess you buy matching ottomans ... as a set? But also there are chair and ottoman sets, so when you search "OTTOMAN SETS" you get a jumble of things. I did not know ottomans came in sets, though I guess if you have a space where multiple ottomans are called for and you like things matchy-matchy, it makes sense.
• 68A: Letters after Lucasfilm (LTD) — what an odd and hyperspecific way to come at LTD. I was not at all sure. And there's a bit of a tricky clue on one of the crosses: [It's not long.] for LAT. (i.e. "latitude," which is not long- ... itude). 

• 73A: Round up at the start? (PRELIMS) — an excellent trick clue. "Round up" looks like a verb but no, "Round" is a noun, as in a round of a tournament. PRELIMS come early ("up at the start") of some tournaments.
• 81A: Supreme pizza topping (OLIVE) — hey, the allegedly "divisive" pizza topping (see Friday's puzz) is back! Non-divisively. Could also have clued ONION this way too, but the puzzle went with [Fried rice add-on] instead.
• 93A: Concerning egg cells (OVULAR) — no problem with this answer, though I do have a slight problem with duping "cells" in the clue (which already appears in the grid in FUEL CELLS (85A: Power sources for some electric cars))
• 106D: Negative Nancy words? (NONS) — Nancy is a city in France. "Noes" (the plural of "no") are "negative words." So "Negative words" in "Nancy" are NONS (the plural of the French word for "no"—"non"). Pretty creative clue for a pretty ugly answer.
• 75D: Spice Girl Chisholm, casually (MEL) — if you're going to be that specific, including the last name and all, the answer really should be MEL C. That is how she typically appears in the grid (seven NYTXW appearances), to distinguish her from her colleague, MEL B (two NYTXW appearances). Not sure why you wade into Spice World when the answer is just MEL. Lotsa plain-old MELs in the world.

• 57D: ___ Oyu, sixth-highest peak in the world (CHO) — should've made this the word of the day. Never heard of it. It's in the Himalayas, on the Nepal/Tibet border. CHO Oyu means "Turquoise Goddess" in Tibetan.
• 99D: "The ___ true for ..." (SAME'S) — I just have "oof" written next to this one. This is a thematically load-bearing answer, and there aren't a lot of good options. Still, oof.
• 95D: Part of a woman's anatomy named for Dr. Ernst Gräfenberg (G-SPOT) — trying to imagine some guy getting the "G" and going "Wait ... anatomy? Women's anatomy? ... I don't ... GRÄFE? ... is it GRÄFE? Do women have GRÄFEs? How did I not know this? GRÄFE?? What does it do? Honey!... Come here a minute. I have questions ..."

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. back to Love Boat for a sec—I just looked up Peter Graves and I am now the same age he was in Airplane! Howwwwwww? When it came out, I was the same age as this kid!:

[TIME AND TIDE]

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Flavoring in purple bubble tea / THU 6-27-24 / One of two heard in "This Kiss" / Prey for a moray eel / Noted name with an Oscar? / Material for some trifold display boards / Uruguayan soccer star Luis / Inn flowery setting for a Nancy Drew mystery / Laundry challenge for a mountain biker / Part of a row that might have a rho

Constructor: Paolo Pasco and Sarah Sinclair

Relative difficulty: Depends on how long it takes you to get the gimmick—after that, Easy

THEME: STUFFED CRUST pizza! (41A: Feature of a deluxe pie ... and of this puzzle?) — grid is shaped (roughly) like a pizza, and the boxes on the edge (or "crust") of it are all "stuffed" with two letters instead of the usual one. The black squares in the puzzle are supposed to represent PIZZA TOPPINGs (26A: Pepperoni, mushroom or green pepper ... or what each cluster of black squares represents in this puzzle)

The all-crust answers (clockwise from the top):

• CASTILLO (1A: Château : France :: ___ : Spain)
• ALPACA (5A: Llama relative with prized wool)
• KEEP TABS (21D: Closely monitor, with "on")
• STINKY (46D: Foul)
• REINDEER (66A: Vixen, e.g.)
• ONE-UPS (65A: Outdoes)
• MURALIST (36D: Artist whose work has a wide reach?)
• WHOOPI (18D: "Sister Act" star, familiarly)

Word of the Day: STUFFED CRUST pizza (41A) —

Stuffed crust pizza is pizza with cheese (typically mozzarella) or other ingredients added into the outer edge of the crust. The stuffed crust pizza was popularized by Pizza Hut, which debuted this style of pizza in 1995. // Pizza Hut introduced stuffed crust pizza, created by Patty Scheibmeir, and launched it on March 25, 1995. It was marketed in a commercial with Donald Trump. // Pizza Hut was sued by the family of Anthony Mongiello for $1 billion, over claims that Pizza Hut's stuffed crust infringed on Mongiello's 1987 patent (US4661361A) on making stuffed pizza shells. Pizza Hut was found to have not infringed on the Patent in 1999, the court stating "...[the] plaintiff does not have a product patent, and its method patent is not infringed simply because some examples of defendant's completed product approximate plaintiff's product." // DiGiorno began offering a cheese stuffed crust pizza in grocery stores in 2001. [...] Pizza Hut New Zealand has sold Marmite stuffed crust pizza, and Pizza Hut Japan introduced a pizza with a crust of pockets stuffed with, alternately, Camembert, shrimp, sausage, and mozzarella. Pizza Hut Japan offered a crust stuffed with shrimp and mayonnaise, and Pizza Hut Germany offered a "German King" with a sausage, bacon, and cheese-stuffed crust. Pizza Hut Japan and South Korea have sold pizza with shrimp and cheese-stuffed crust, and Pizza Hut Hong Kong made abalone sauce "Cheesy Lava"-stuffed crust pizza. Pizza Hut Australia made a pizza with a crust stuffed with miniature meat pies. (wikipedia) (dang, I've been to NZ five times and no one ever offered this to me! I feel cheated)

• • •

It is stupid how good this puzzle is. How good the puzzle has been two days in a row now. The concept is actually ... kind of simple. Stuff the crust (of the grid) with two letters instead of one. Change the shape of the grid from square to round (-ish). Make the black squares look (kinda) like PIZZA TOPPINGs. Conceptually, simple. Execution-wise, I'm guessing less simple. A lot less. So so so nice to have a puzzle that is obviously an architectural marvel but that doesn't feel overly fussy or complicated and that isn't either torturous or tedious to solve. This one was hard ... and then bam, the gimmick dropped and it was delightful. Maybe a touch too easy—once you know the outer edges are "stuffed," the puzzle drops to like a Tuesday/Wednesday difficulty level. But the grid is juicy and varied enough to remain interesting for the rest of the solve, and I will confess that I gasped (ever so slightly) when the grid went full COLOR at the end. I am on record as not caring for this kind of tech-assisted gimmickry, but I think I object to the gimmickry most when it seems to be the main point of interest, or when it seems to be trying to make up for mediocre puzzle quality. Today, I loved the puzzle so much that the post-solve pop of pizza—the visual transformation to color—felt like a nice little bonus. I mean, I wouldn't eat anything that looked like that, but I can see the pizzaness of it all maybe a little more clearly. Mainly I was just stunned that my software was capable of such a transformation. I stubbornly refuse to solve in-app (or on the site)—it's just not convenient for my purposes, and I don't like the idea of my solving data being harvested—so I use Black Ink, which has generally not had the color / animation / post-solve whistles and bells that the app has been leaning into. So when my grid burst into color in the end ... part of my gasp was genuine surprise that my software could even do something like that. But surface-level effects aside, this puzzle was a joy to solve as a puzzle. As long as a puzzle holds up as a puzzle, you can make it do whatever you want once I'm done solving. Make it self-destruct for all I care. The puzzle is the thing, and this one was a joy.

The difficulty today is getting started. If you're like me (maybe??) you probably wrote in CASA at 1A: Château : France :: ___ : Spain and then quickly ground to a halt. Maybe you got mad that certain words you knew had to be right just wouldn't fit ("I know it's Steve CARELL ... or is it CARREL? Or CARRELL? Those don't fit either. Wait, is it CAREL? That ... looks wrong"). The secret to getting started on this one, for me, was Get Away From The Edge. "Step away from the crust, sir." God bless you, TORI Amos. Once I finally found an answer that I *knew* and that *fit*, I felt like I had some kind of chance. The puzzle bloomed out from TORI to IPO and ORSO. Then I looked at that long answer, which turned out to be the first themer. The answer seemed to be "PIZZA TOPPING" *and* I had some letters to confirm it, so I inched my way west via crosses, filling in PIZZA TOPPING backwards as I went. PINTA, ODISTS, APT ... And then, I was like "OK, so we're gonna run out of room here real quick. We're ... one letter short. So ... is it ... is it just a two letters / one square trick!!??! (puts in the "PI" and then checks 18D: "Sister Act" star, familiarly) Yes, that's it! OMG, it's a STUFFED CRUST pizza!!!!" I actually mentally shouted the revealer before I ever even got to the revealer itself. I just knew instantly that that's what was up. I had the pizza part and then the "PI" went in and whooooosh the whole theme came to me in a rush. 

Of course I still had to finish, and it seemed like the stuffed squares could potentially get perilous at points. I definitely tiptoed my way to CASTILLO (totally unknown to me), and struggled to make something ending in "-US" from 12A: Parting words ("CALL US!"?) (I like my ADIEUX to end with a proper "X" thank you very much). 

 

But mostly the crust didn't give me any flak. If anything, the crust was easy to get because every time you punched a cross through it, you got two letters to work from instead of just one. When crosses are giving you two letters, well, that's twice as much info they're providing. So the crust actually helped more than hurt, I think. My only complaint with the theme is the cluing on STUFFED CRUST (41A: Feature of a deluxe pie...). I have had many "deluxe" pies in my life and precisely zero of them have had STUFFED CRUST (if a pizza is actually *good* then the crust is good and I don't want any gunk in it, thanks). "Deluxe" has to do with toppings, not crust (just google if you don't believe me). Also, there are *plenty* of STUFFED CRUST options that are not "deluxe" at all. Just plain-ass pepperoni or whatever. If you really think there's some connection between STUFFED CRUST and the concept of "deluxe," at least put a qualifier in there ([Feature of some deluxe pies...]). Probably better off finding another clue entirely. A "Deluxe"-free clue.

Deluxe answers:

• 9A: ___ Inn, "flowery" setting for a Nancy Drew mystery (LILAC) — seems like a tough clue, but I had the "AC" from ACERB (a word I've still only ever seen in crosswords ... irl we say "acerbic," I think).
• 19A: Potential goal for a unicorn, in brief (IPO) — I forget the specific corporate meaning of "unicorn," but I've picked up enough dumb bizspeak from crosswords that I saw right through this and went straight to the crosswordesey IPO, no problem. (Here's the def of "unicorn" if you're interested) (IPO = initial public offering)
• 50A: Rough houses? (STUCCOS) — I know stucco as a house-coating material. I did not know you called the whole damn house a "stucco." Still, I knew what stucco was, and that it was rough, and found on houses, so no trouble.
• 3D: College team whose name is its home state minus two letters (ILLINI) — The Fighting ILLINI! (just two letters short of their home state, ILLINIDO)
• 11D: Uruguayan soccer star Luis (SUAREZ) — now that I see his name, I have actually heard of him. I feel like he gets thrown out of games a lot, is that right? Oh, I see. He bites. And says racist stuff. Fun! (Here's a huge article him from the NYT last year) ("banned on three separate occasions for biting opponents during matches")
• 17D: One of two heard in "This Kiss" (SHORT "I") — a "letteral" clue. I misread this as "The Kiss," as in the Klimt painting. "How am I supposed to hear a painting!?"

• 28D: Mixed bag? (TEA) — the tea ... is mixed ... inside the TEA bag ... I guess?
• 36D: Artist whose work has a wide reach? (MURALIST) — Is this because murals are (often) big (i.e. "wide") or because murals are so often outdoors, in public view, and thus available to a "wide" audience (wider than a painting in a museum would have)? Both? Neither? Shrug.
• 43D: Material for some trifold display boards (FOAMCORE) — been 40+ years since my last science fair project, and if I ever knew the name of this stuff I forgot it. Still, not hard to infer.
• 58D: Duane ___ (pharmacy chain) (READE) — obvious to New Yorkers, a lot less obvious (I think) to the rest of the world. I have never seen a Duane READE outside NYC.
• 33A: "That one's mine!" ("I GOT DIBS!") — one of the delightful answers that made this puzzle a pleasure to solve even beyond the theme reveal. See also RUMOR MILLS, MUD STAIN, GO BROKE, LOLLIPOP, etc.
• 59D: Noted name with an Oscar? (MAYER) — as in "wiener." Some STUFFED CRUST pizzas are stuffed with wieners. Wouldn't want that in my crust any more than I'd want REINDEER, ALPACA, or WHOOPI Goldberg in there. Let crust be crust and toppings be toppings! These are my conservative pizza views! Unstuff your crusts, people! The fact that I loved a puzzle based on a food abomination is a real Christmas miracle. This puzzle has powers. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Rhythm-interrupting jazz technique / THU 11-16-23 / So-called "African unicorn" / Married a woman, archaically / Mack 2010s Disney show / 2012 Macklemore & Ryan Lewis single with the lyric "I can't change even if I tried"

Constructor: Paolo Pasco

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: Evel Knievel jumping over a line of buses — this feat is literally depicted in the grid, i.e. EVEL KNIEVEL appears in circles that form a bell-curve arc, and that arc goes over a line of three BUSes, each entered in a single square (63A: Group that's cleared by this puzzle's subject, depicted literally). 

The BUS squares:

• COLUM(BUS) (41D: State capital with the nickname "Arch City")
• RE(BUS) (57D: "T_RN," for "No U-Turn," e.g.)
• SYLLA(BUS) (42D: Paper handed out as a matter of course?)

Other theme material:

• GET OVER IT (3D: Punny advice to this puzzle's subject)
• DAREDEVIL (9D: Description of this puzzle's subject)
• LIVING ON THE EDGE (23A: Acting dangerously, like this puzzle's subject)

Word of the Day: URL hijacking (56A: ___ hijacking, another term for "typosquatting") —

Typosquatting, also called URL hijacking, a sting site, a cousin domain, or a fake URL, is a form of cybersquatting, and possibly brandjacking which relies on mistakes such as typos made by Internet users when inputting a website address into a web browser. Should a user accidentally enter an incorrect website address, they may be led to any URL (including an alternative website owned by a cybersquatter).

The typosquatter's URL will usually be one of five kinds, all similar to the victim site address:

• A common misspelling, or foreign language spelling, of the intended site
• A misspelling based on a typographical error
• A plural of a singular domain name
• A different top-level domain: (e.g. .com instead of .org)
• An abuse of the Country Code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD) (.cm, .co, or .om instead of .com)

Similar abuses:

• Combosquatting - no misspelling, but appending an arbitrary word that appears legitimate, but that anyone could register.
• Doppelganger domain - omitting a period or inserting an extra period
• Appending terms such as sucks or -suckes to a domain name

Once in the typosquatter's site, the user may also be tricked into thinking that they are in fact in the real site, through the use of copied or similar logos, website layouts, or content. Spam emails sometimes make use of typosquatting URLs to trick users into visiting malicious sites that look like a given bank's site, for instance. (wikipedia)

• • •

Conceptually, this is ridiculous. The good kind of ridiculous. I mean, it's absurd, fantastical even, that any DAREDEVIL, even Evel, could get that kind of lift. He's ten buses high at his apogee! Or maybe he's jumping Matchbox buses. Also, if you build ramps that are three buses high, I'm pretty sure lots of folks, even non-DAREDEVILs, could jump a line of three buses (and only 3? seems like Evel would jump more). It's proportionally preposterous, but as a visual evocation of the act, mwah, it's perfect. Wheeeeee, there he goes through the air. Perfect landing! The only question is: what, exactly, is he jumping. I thought maybe a shark, but that's Fonzie. And it didn't fit. The trickiest thing about the puzzle was probably that BUS line, in that it's tucked down there, very cut off from the rest of the grid, and every pathway in (i.e. all three Down answers that reach down there) is a rebus-containing answer, which means the lengths are all wrong. I spent a good deal of time refusing to go forward until I could remember the six-letter state capital that started COL-. “I thought I knew all the state capitals! No, I do know all of them! Ugh, what am I forgetting?” Only by crawling down into that empty section can you find the revealer (I typically follow crosses and do not jump into any empty section unless I have to). Once you do see the revealer, OK, great, it's BUS. But BUS ... fits in the three letters, so probably some of you are going to be like stupid me and just write in BUS. I figured COLUM-, RE-, and SYLLA- all just shared the one BUS. But no, of course, there's a *line* of BUSes. Once I rebusified those three squares, boom, Happy Completed Puzzle Message! It wasn't graceful, but I landed unscathed.

What I liked most about the puzzle, though, was how stupidly punny and playfully self-referential it was. It taunts you right off the bat with the corny GET OVER IT pun (before you even know what the puzzle is about), and then backs that up with a literal dad-joke STEAK pun (36A: "___ puns are a rare medium well done" (dad joke)—get it? rare? ... medium? ... well done? ... STEAK? ... it's pretty subtle). But the really, truly great pun = the buses themselves. A REBUS puzzle that uses REBUS as a REBUS answer!? A REBUS puzzle that is about buses—that is RE: BUSes!?! That ... is bold. That is the extra layer that takes this theme from good to great. From great to art. Now I know why EVEL seems to enter lower orbit there at the peak of his jump—it's a visual representation of the puzzle's own thematic ambition ... just leaving the earth's gravitational pull for a bit ("actually, if he left the earth's gravitational pull he wouldn't come back down" "you don't say, fascinating"). There's also something oddly pleasing, even soothing, about the fact that both ramps have EVEL's name on them. And that EVEL is a prime piece of crosswordese in his own right. This theme just keeps on giving.

What I didn't care for too much was the Heavy reliance on proper nouns, particularly contemporary pop culture proper nouns. The pop culture lane feels a little narrow, and it's definitely gonna prove exclusionary for a huge chunk of the solving population. I count three hip-hop/R&B answers, at least three TV shows, and a Super Mario Bros Movie —and that's on top of your usual array of proper nouns. Got to feeling like a trivia test at times, and though I knew some of the trivia ... I dunno, it just felt like it was leaning into pop culture so heavily that it was bound to wreck some solvers, and that is the worst way to get wrecked. I don't think there are any bad crosses. Everything seemed ultimately gettable, which is what counts. Still, the pop culture stuff felt mildly excessive today. But then I look up LIL MAMA (53A: Rapper with the 2007 hit "Lip Gloss") and find that she actually played Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes in the TV movie CrazySexyCool: The TLC [!] Story (see 43A: R&B trio with the album "CrazySexyCool"), and I'm right back to admiring the puzzle's winking playfulness. Whatever the puzzle's doing, it knows it's doing it, and it's doing it with confidence and purpose. And humor. And good will, I assume.

What else!?:

• 1A: Sonic boom generator? (SEGA) — because SEGA is the company that produces the Sonic (the Hedgehog) games, and yeah, I guess there was a (sales) "boom" in those games at some point, why not?
• 12A: Motion propellers (AYES) — not OARS!? Not OARS.
• 31A: Married a woman, archaically (WIVED) — LOL this offsets the pop culture trivia a bit. Gotta balance the contemporary with the archaic! I kept thinking the "a" in the clue was a typo, that the clue was supposed to be [Married woman, archaically]. Not sure what that answer would've been. But it doesn't matter now.
• 60A: "Dominus illuminatio ___") ("MEA") — this had to be it, but the gender of MEA seemed off to me. But no, turns out illuminatio is indeed feminine, so MEA, yep, makes sense. MEA culpa.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Fatalistic sort in slang / SUN 10-15-22 / Actress who played Jessica in "Parasite" / axis half of an ellipse's shorter diameter / Old-fashioned letter opener / Ritual with bamboo utensils / Pastry with the same shape as an Argentine medialuna / Currency for the prize on Squid Game / Popular subcompact hatchback from Japan / Country whose flag depicts a machete / French equivalent of Stephen

Constructor: Paolo Pasco

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: "Terminal Connections" — five different pairs of (Down) answers turn at right angles (one east, one west) and their ends ("terminals") eventually meet up (make a "connection") at two circled squares—those squares end up spelling out MAKE ENDS MEET. Also, the horizontal (Across) parts of each pair of theme answers form a separate, clued answer:

Theme answers:

• SIDE AR(M) (A)DAMAR (6D: *Baseball pitching style ... or a weapon = SIDEARM + 24A: Old-fashioned letter opener = DEAR MADAM + 14D: *Big name in hotels = RAMADA)
• BITEMAR(K) (E)TINGIER (36D: *Indentation on a chew toy = BITE MARK + 53A: Online promotions, collectively = E-MARKETING + 38D: *Light again = REIGNITE)
• LESTRAD(E) (N)AMESRON (40D: *Whom Holmes tells "You do find it very hard to tackle the facts" = LESTRADE + 56A: What businesses go by = TRADE NAMES + 43D: *Many a Viking  = NORSEMAN)
• THOUSAN(D) (S)TONEUGUH (62D: *Grands = THOUSANDS + 89A: Rock commonly used in asphalt = SANDSTONE + 65D: *Early French Protestants = HUGUENOTS)
• US VS THE(M) (E)ROOM IMED (67D: *Basic rivalry = US VS. THEM + 91A: Part of a hotel with décor fitting a certain motif = THEME ROOM + 70D: *"G.I. Jane" star, 1997 = DEMI MOORE)
• ANOTHER ON(E) (T)TESSAB (100D: *"Encore!" = "ANOTHER ONE!" + 122A: "Be My Baby" group, 1963 = THE RONETTES + 106D: *Actress Angela (BASSETT)

Word of the Day: Stop STREET (!?!?!) (61A: Word with easy or stop = STREET) —

: a street on which a vehicle must stop just before entering a through street (merriam-webster.com) [So it's just ... a street that has a stop sign on it perpendicular to one that doesn't? Is that it? This term is baffling to me]

• • •

Well, it took me about half an hour just to type in the theme answers, so I only have so much energy left to give. I am really torn about this puzzle. The theme is ingenious. Intricate and complex and brilliant. It is one of those "feat of construction" puzzles that, in this case, really feels worth it. I don't know if I *loved* solving it, but I at least liked solving it, and I really am impressed by all of its layers—the right angles, the separate, third answer formed by the connecting themers, the message spelled out by all the "Terminal Connection"—all of it, really quite amazing. Perhaps because the theme is so incredibly dense and demanding, I felt like the grid got in trouble in a few areas. And it definitely got outside (repeatedly, way outside) my knowledge base. Let's leave my ignorance aside for a moment and just deal with the grid roughness. The iffiest part of the grid is that REL (?!) / LESTRADE crossing. If I had to name four characters from the Sherlock Holmes stories, that ... would not be one of them. I don't Really know who LESTRADE is. I think I'm confusing him with the vampire Lestat. My point is that I needed crosses to get all of the "LEST" part, and that "L" was an out and out guess. "L" really did feel right, and it was right, but it seemed cruel to give REL (which is not good fill to begin with) a not-terribly-famous partial name clue. Anywhere else in the grid, I wouldn't have minded learning the name of Lil REL Howery, but I kinda minded learning the name *there*, in that specific place. Crossing proper nouns at a letter that I can't infer is the definition of a "Natick." Now, I *could* infer it, or at least I pulled it out of somewhere, but still, yeesh. That felt like a design flaw. Otherwise, the theme was well nigh flawless. 

The fill, on the other hand, gave me some grief. ILIADS? Plural? (68A: Long, tragic stories). Not really buying that. Sunday SCARIES? That is some infantilizing dopey terminology right there (112A: Sunday ___ (end-of-week anxiety, casually)). DOOMER? (75D: Fatalistic sort, in slang). Come on, do people actually say that? I know that there are BOOMERs who DOOM-SCROLL but are they really DOOMERs? Also, being "fatalistic" and believing you are / the world is "doomed" are very different things, actually. Moving on: the clue on WHEY, wh(e)y!? (80D: No ___! (punnily named dairy-free chocolate brand)). So unnecessarily hard and proper-nounified. If you stuff something into a hole (say) (41A), you CRAM it down. RAMS DOWN is something you with an idea or concept, to someone's throat. REHOUSE was rough, esp. coming so close on the heels of the themer REIGNITE. There were two times when cross-references were in the same small section (IN RE / MEMO and AQUA / LUNG), which always makes solving said sections awkward / tougher. I just grew WEARIER as the puzzle went on because of a pile-up of these little annoyances. Again, the big picture = amazing theme. But I felt like the non-theme stuff was slowly pecking me to death. A little. 

I loved "Parasite" but confess that I know none of the actors names, so PARK SO-DAM was a toughie. But since her name was largely free of theme entanglements, I could pick it up from crosses just fine. Not a fan of the TMNT, so "COWABUNGA" didn't amuse me the way it will amuse others, but I really Really liked seeing THE RONETTES plastered across the bottom of my grid. Just an amazing connector phrase for those two final theme answers. TEA CEREMONY is another lovely long answer (45A: Ritual with bamboo utensils). Biggest mistake was writing in YEN for WON (never watched "Squid Game," though if I'd thought about it for half a second, I did know it was Korean, not Japanese). This made the already hard DOOMER and WHEY even harder. Don't think I had any other out-and-out errors. Found "AS A FOLLOW-UP" really hard, esp. as clued (69D: "Continuing where we left off last time ..."). I had the first few letters and could only think of "AS AFOREMENTIONED..." which wouldn't fit. Speaking of fit, HONDA FIT, nice. I mean, cars, boo, product placement, boo, but I thought getting the whole make + model in there was at least original. 

Not sure I'd've kept MEN in the puzzle (1D: Bachelors, e.g.) when NORSEMAN is already there, in a theme position (I've definitely had editors flag less flagrant etymological dupes than that), but that's a very minor consideration, especially consider how big the grid is and how far away those answers are from one another. The clue on IDAHO was fantastic (84D: U.S. ID?), maybe my favorite of the puzzle. So deceptively simple. All in all, far more fun than I have most Sundays. Paolo is truly gifted, and I think my standards for him are thus very, perhaps unfairly high. Hence the grousing. Anyway, that's all. See you ... whenever you come back again, I suppose.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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