Clothing chain that began as a surf shop / WED 9-24-25 / Dance craze named for a Southern city / Taunt that may follow a gullibility test / Future amaryllis, e.g. / Colorful ring-tailed mammals of Asia / Participate in a blindside on "Survivor," say / 2011 Peace Nobelist ___ Johnson Sirleaf

Constructor: Peter A. Collins

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: FINGERS / CROSSED (54A: With 57-Across, gesture depicted by this puzzle's circled letters) — two things that crossed fingers can mean + a visual depiction of crossed fingers (in circled squares, INDEX crossing MIDDLE):

Theme answers:

• "I HOPE SO" (20A: Possible meaning of 54-/57-Across)
• "I'M LYING" (22A: Possible meaning of 54-/57-Across)

Word of the Day: PACSUN (5D: Clothing chain that began as a surf shop) —

Pacific Sunwear of California, LLC, commonly known as PacSun, is an American retail clothing brand. The company sells lifestyle apparel, along with swim, footwear and accessories designed for teens and young adults. As of 2022, the company operated 325 stores in all 50 states and Puerto Rico. PacSun is headquartered in Anaheim, California, and formerly operated a distribution center in Groveport, Ohio. The company's regional directors, district managers and store positions are located throughout the United States. The company went bankrupt in April 2016 and is now owned by Golden Gate Capital. (wikipedia)

• • •

Oof, PACSUN. If you haven't set foot in a mall for a while, or if you never frequented malls in the first place, then that is going to be your proper noun outlier today, for sure. PACSUN feels like a store I made up in my mental construction of a prototypical mall, a store to fill the space between Auntie Anne’s and Hot Topic. But no, I'm fairly sure I bought a pair of Etnies at the local PACSUN some time in the aughts. Black with a green "E" on the side. Those shoes are long gone, but maybe I can find a picture online ... yeah, something like this:

[Mine might've had green laces]

So I have actually been in a PACSUN, have actually purchased at least one item (two, if you count both shoes) from a PACSUN, and *I* needed several crosses to get it. It will shock no one to discover that PACSUN has never been in the NYTXW before today. So it's a safe bet that that answer will prove at least a minor struggle for a number of solvers. But I'm guessing only minor, as this puzzle is otherwise Monday-easy, with only one other proper noun— ELLEN Johnson Sirleaf—that's likely to impede anyone's progress very much (19D: 2011 Peace Nobelist ___ Johnson Sirleaf). I generally do not remember Nobel Peace Prize winners, no matter how worthy of admiration recipients might be. Sirleaf was president of Liberia from 2006 to 2018, the first elected female head of state in Africa. "She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011, in recognition of her efforts to bring women into the peacekeeping process" (wikipedia). She was imprisoned in the '80s for criticizing the government. Punished for criticizing the government!? Well, I never! That sounds terrible. So happy I live in a country where this could never ever (ever) happen. (FINGERS CROSSED!)

The one thing I like about this theme is that it's weird. It's got a wonky picture element, which looks far more like the cross Jesus bears than a pair of crossed fingers.

[Botticelli, 1490-91]

It's got hardly any actual theme answers beyond the revealer. In fact, the revealer takes up as much space as all the other non-pictorial theme material combined. There are two long Acrosses that feel like they should be theme answers, but aren't (CHARLESTON, "MADE YA LOOK!"). But it's an original concept, and the execution is charming, in a rough kind of way.

[Ecce Homo, 2012 partial restoration]

Just a few sticking points today. PACSUN, as I said, and then SIRI, which feels like a rookie mistake on my part. SIRI clues are frequently punny or otherwise misdirective, so I'm surprised I didn't see through that one faster (8D: One who's given many instructions nowadays). Did not know ELLEN Sirleaf, as I said, and then I had my ten thousand as TEN K, not TEN G (12D: 100 C-notes). TENK is exclusively a race length answer (sixteen NYTXW appearances all time). All that trouble and pseudo-trouble came in the N and NE. The only other place I sputtered a bit was at INTERNED / NARKED (man that "word" looks bad). Something about the clue on INTERNED made it tough for me to get ahold of (45A: Worked to learn); I thought "Worked" means simply "strove," not "did actual labor." And as for NARKED, I mean, look at it. Come on. It's like you typo'd MARKED. Or NAKED. The word is NARCED. I know English doesn't like a hard "C" preceding an "E," but too bad, you're gonna have to make an exception here, as NARKED just looks too silly. Bizarrely, NARKED has now appeared in the NYTXW two times, and NARCED ... zero. And yet the NARKED clue itself seems to know that it's the variant (47D: Squealed: Var.). I now demand that at least two constructors put NARCED in their upcoming puzzles. To even things out, at least. Also, still looking for OZU. NARCED and OZU, my White Whales.

[23A: Cannonball Adderley's musical instrument, informally]

Bullets:

• 17A: Participate in a blindside on "Survivor," say (VOTE) — how is this show still on the air? It's like a zombie, going on indefinitely. Seriously, I think it's on Season 47 or something like that ... Holy Crap, Survivor 49 (!!!!!!?) premieres literally tonight. Anyway, I watched many seasons of the show back in the aughts and then it got old and tiresome and reality TV in general began to feel like a soul-rotting scourge so I stopped. I do not recall anything called a "blindside."
• 59A: Taunt that may follow a gullibility test ("MADE YA LOOK!") — this is a fun answer, though I've never heard the phrase "gullibility test" before. A more specific context would've made for a more entertaining clue. I like that this answer is parallel with the CHARLESTON (18A: Dance craze named for a Southern city). If someone suddenly broke into the CHARLESTON, they would definitely make me look.
• 32D: Future amaryllis, e.g. (BULB) — brain got confused as to what exactly an "amaryllis" was. Briefly imagined it was a kind of butterfly and kinda wanted PUPA here. 
• 34D: Colorful ring-tailed mammals of Asia (RED PANDA) — adorable. A nice way to end this write-up.

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
=============================
❤️ Support this blog ❤️: 

• Venmo (@MichaelDavidSharp)]

=============================
✏️ Upcoming Crossword Tournaments ✏️

• Midwest Crossword Tournament (Chicago) (Sat., Oct. 4, 2025)
• Finger Lakes Crossword Competition (Ithaca) (Sat., Oct. 18, 2025)

=============================
📘 My other blog 📘:

• Pop Sensation (vintage paperbacks)

Read more...

Troopers, on a CB radio / WED 5-28-25 / New Jersey city with a bridge to Staten Island / Sholem ___, author of "Children of Abraham" / Question while pointing / Like many a Swiftie / Philosopher known for paradoxes / Pixar character who has trouble saying "anemone" / Rare blood type, in brief

Constructor: Peter A. Collins

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: FIDDLER (58A: Musical featuring the song depicted by this puzzle's circled letters, familiarly) — "SUNRISE, SUNSET" appears in circled letters that ascend in the west and set in the east, just like the ... uh ... hey, wait a minute ... (there are also two vaguely related long themers): 

Theme answers:

• "GOOD MORNING" (13D: First words of the day, perhaps)
• "NIGHTY-NIGHT" (15D: Last words of the day, perhaps)

Word of the Day: BAYONNE (34A: New Jersey city with a bridge to Staten Island) —

Bayonne (/beɪˈ(j)oʊn/ bay-(Y)OHN) is a city in Hudson County in the U.S. state of New Jersey, in the Gateway Region on Bergen Neck, a peninsula between Newark Bay to the west, the Kill Van Kull to the south, and New York Bay to the east. At the 2020 United States census, it was the state's 15th-most-populous municipality, surpassing Passaic, with a population of 71,686, an increase of 8,662 (+13.7%) from the 2010 census count of 63,024, which in turn reflected an increase of 1,182 (+1.9%) from the 61,842 counted in the 2000 census. The Census Bureau's Population Estimates Program calculated a population of 74,532 for 2024, making it the 517th-most populous municipality in the nation.

Bayonne was formed as a township in 1861, from portions of Bergen Township, and reincorporated as a city by an act of the New Jersey Legislature in 1869. At the time it was formed, Bayonne included the communities of Bergen Point, Constable Hook, Centreville, Pamrapo and Saltersville.

While somewhat diminished, traditional manufacturing, distribution, and maritime activities remain a driving force of the economy of the city. A portion of the Port of New York and New Jersey is located there, as is the Cape Liberty Cruise Port.

• • •

I think I liked this puzzle better when I thought it was depicting the bridge from BAYONNE to Staten Island, but even then I wasn't having that good a time. That NW corner is a real off-putter (putter-offer?). So much Scrabble-f***ing (not one not two not three but four high-value Scrabble tiles). All so we can endure three proper nouns *and* the ugliness of ANEG, all crammed into one tiny little section, before we've really gotten anywhere. Then there's BAYONNE, which is some real provincial "you gotta live in the greater NYC area" crud. We're coming up on the 70th anniversary (!) of the last time BAYONNE appeared in the puzzle ... for a reason! It's not a puzzle-worthy place. By any stretch. Unless that stretch is a stretch of bridge that you are depicting in the puzzle (this is why I was willing to give BAYONNE a pass for a little bit). But then no, the "bridge" ended up "spanning" the distance between BAYONNE and ... ARMY VET? Is that a place on Staten Island? That doesn't sound like a place on Staten Island. So weird to find out that the theme had nothing to do with BAYONNE or bridges at all. The circled letters are, instead, an oddly high-arcing sun moving the wrong way across the sky? The theme is ... a song from FIDDLER? Plus two tacked-on / musically unrelated expressions? One of which is in kiddiespeak (NIGHTY-NIGHT)? This felt showy but also messy. Plus it was laden with crosswordese (SRA SST ABA ANEG DAK RONI VENI EDY ... plural IRENES!?). There's a Fred & Ginger crossreferenced pair, for some reason (ASTAIRE / ROGERS, "Top Hat" costars). I mean, I love them, but so weird to have such an elaborate crossreference and have it be completely unrelated to the theme. This is what I mean by "messy." It wasn't boring, but it also wasn't really enjoyable for me, either.

No real tricky spots today. I needed most every cross to get BAYONNE, and some more crosses to get the ARMY part of ARMY VET (nothing in the clue that is Army-specific). I had TOKE before VAPE (6D: Puff on an e-cig). I wrote in "NO LIE" but then remembered the phrase "NO CAP" exists, so pulled the "LIE" part and waited for crosses ("LIE" was correct, as you know). I thought the [Eur. alliance] was the G-TEN. Isn't there also a G-TWELVE? And a G-SEVEN? And a G-TWENTY?! Is this the same group and it just keeps changing numbers? (Answer: No—all different groups ... really hard to remember what any of them mean when the naming system is so unimaginative). 

[G-SIX = six largest E.U. members, but since Brexit, it's back to just being the G5 (which is what it was originally, before Poland joined), so today's answer is ... dated]

I don't think of SIT-UPS as something one does at the "gym" (45D: Some gym reps). I mean, of course one might, but there's nothing gym-specific about SIT-UPS, so that answer didn't come to me immediately. But overall, no serious sticking points. If you are familiar with FIDDLER, then maybe you liked this. If you're not familiar with FIDDLER, then I have no idea what you made of this. I maybe saw the movie version of FIDDLER once. I know the song only because it's ... just ... in the air, somehow. Not sure if the song is still similarly "in the air," esp. for younger solvers.

Lightning round:

• 19A: "Sharp Dressed Man" band (ZZTOP) — speaking of "in the air," the NYTXW is single-handedly keeping ZZTOP in the air. They're the go-to band in clues for TRIO (very recently, in fact), and now here they are, an answer in their own right—for the 20th time (though the first time in almost seven years).

• 38A: Like many a Swiftie (TEENAGE) — because MIDDLE-AGED wouldn't fit (Swift is 35 and a huge chunk of her fandom is 40+ so ... [Like many a Swiftie] could've been anything, honestly. It's not that she doesn't have teen fans, obviously, just that this clue feels like a caricature of fandom. Her actual fandom is mmaassiivvee.)
• 9D: Question while pointing ("HERE?") — cluing this as a question is semi-perverse. I mean, any one word can be a question if you want it to be. "HIM?" "ME?" "BUTTER?"
• 32D: Hosp. diagnostic (EEG) — seems to be a thing today, leaving off any specificity in the clue. Nothing Army-specific in ARMY VET clue, and nothing brain-specific in this EEG clue (which means you had to leave that middle letter blank and wait for the cross ... or you didn't leave it blank and got lucky ... or you didn't leave it blank and made the EKG mistake. Or you just went nuts and recklessly wrote in MRI. One of those things happened, for sure.

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

Read more...

Freshly pressed grapes before fermentation / SAT 10-26-24 / Vessel that hasn't crossed the Canadian border since 1993 / The so-called "Rocket City" of the South / Oslo Accords signatory, for short / Name on the playbill for the 1936 Salzburg Festival / When doubled, a pop nickname / Fish whose egg casings are called "mermaid's purses" / Medical breakthrough of 1954 that yielded a Nobel Prize

Constructor: Peter A. Collins

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: MUST (10A: Freshly pressed grapes before fermentation) —

Must (from the Latin vinum mustum; lit. 'young wine') is freshly crushed fruit juice (usually grape juice) that contains the skins, seeds, and stems of the fruit. The solid portion of the must is called pomace and typically makes up 7–23% of the total weight of the must. Making must is the first step in winemaking. Because of its high glucose content, typically between 10 and 15%, must is also used as a sweetener in a variety of cuisines. Unlike commercially sold grape juice, which is filtered and pasteurized, must is thick with particulate matter, opaque, and comes in various shades of brown and purple. (wikipedia)

• • •

[18A: Meaning of a finger wag]
(graphic: PBS News)

The more I look this puzzle over, the easier it looks. All the difficulty for me today came because I got suckered into starting the puzzle from below. Shoulda just stuck to the routine: NW to start (if possible), and then generally top to bottom, L to R. This ensures that the answers that I get tend to make up the *front* ends of other answers, especially longer answers. Much easier, for instance, to get VOCAL CORD from VOC- than to get RAVISHING from -ING. But today, as I say, I got drawn into the SE by my own hubris. First answer into the grid was an out-and-out gimme ... and a cross-reference:

[5D: With 43-Down, fictional coach of AFC Richmond]

Now, there's no reason I should've felt the need to check the crosses on LASSO because LASSO was indisputably correct. But some solver instinct made me check the crosses and then *stay* down in the SW—possibly because there were simply more letters in place down there, and I generally build off of the place where I have the most information to go on. Sigh. Should've stuck to the plan! Should've trusted the process! But no, I start working this thing bassackwards, which accounts for almost all the difficulty that I experienced today. I'm never making the LOUISVILLE-for-HUNTSVILLE error (28D: The so-called "Rocket City" of the South) if I come at this thing from the top. I'm never imagining that the -TY at the end of 22D: Something to wallow in (SELF-PITY) is a "STY." That central triple stack was fairly easy for me, but I bet it would've been even easier if I'd come at those long answers from their first letters instead of their last. When I play Quordle, I have a routine. Same first two guesses every time, and after that, if one of the answers isn't readily apparent, my first burner word is CHIMP (or CHOMP or CHUMP, depending on what vowels I might need to move). But sommmmmetimes I try to get cute and guess a different word based on some hunch I have about what one of the words *might* be, and I cannot tell you how many times that decision has bitten me in the ass. "GAWKY!? What was I thinking!?," I mutter as I enter the final correct answer on my ninth (and final) guess. Anyway, I do things a certain way for a reason—because it's effective. Luckily, today, my getting cute didn't cost me much because the puzzle is so easy overall. Lesson learned (and, undoubtedly, soon forgotten).

The triple stack is mostly solid, but it's also the only thing the puzzle has going for it. There are other longer answers, obviously, but they’re largely ho-hum, and then there's all this short stuff—what seemed like an awful lot of short stuff for a Saturday. Alllll the corners, all the nooks and crannies on the edges of the grid, are choked with 3s 4s and 5s. This is probably what made the puzzle feel so easy (lots of little opportunities for traction), but also what made it feel a little lackluster. As for that stack—my main issue with it is that the phrase is "DON'T WAIT UP!" That's what you'd say. The "FOR US" feels totally tacked on (even if it makes a perfectly reasonable complete phrase). The "FOR US" takes a lot of the pop out of the colloquial energy of the phrase. De-zings the expression. Also, I like ORGAN TRANSPLANT as an answer, but I don't like its clue very much (34A: Medical breakthrough of 1954 that yielded a Nobel Prize), mainly because it's so specific that I couldn't help but wonder "Which organ?" (It’s a kidney). Really wanted an actual organ there, making ORGAN a weird sort of letdown. If I hadn't had the "O" from "DO I!" (29D: Emphatic agreement)—which I'd gotten earlier from IDENTITY THIEVES—I might have guessed HEART, even though I was pretty sure the first HEART TRANSPLANT was many years later (actually, only a little over a decade later: 1967). IDENTITY THIEVES is the real winner of the triple stack today—a nice answer with a clever clue (35A: Masters of bad impersonation?). But (with slight side-eye at FOR US), the stack is totally acceptable, and—more impressively—its crosses are all admirably clean (you tend to get a lot of compromised fill in the answers holding stacks together).

The only time I got stuck, like ... stuck stuck ... was here, trying to get into the SW corner to finish up the puzzle:

I would've called a "spade" a GARDEN TOOL. Something about the phrase LAWN TOOL just wasn't clicking at all. Just getting that answer to LAWNT- took some doing, as "Spade" has so many meanings (a card suit, a famous detective, etc.). LAWNT- looked so weird to me that I genuinely wondered if I had an error. But no. How 'bout the other Down that could've led me into the SW? (27D: Vessel that hasn't crossed the Canadian border since 1993). In a word: NOPE. Couldn't make sense of it. That clue was bonkers for several reasons: first, the ambiguity of the word "vessel"; second, the oddness of the word "crossed" (trophies don't have mobility or agency); and third, the unclear implications of "1993," which had me wondering whether the clue wasn't dealing with some obscure transportation provision in NAFTA (turns out that NAFTA was signed in 1992 and took effect in 1994, so my historical memory there was somehow both perfect and wrong). Now, when I say I was "stuck" here at LAWNT- and STAN-, it's not a real stuck. It's a stubborn stuck. It's an "I should be able to get this without looking at any other clues" stuck. Because eventually I got from --OS to LOOS (36A: Pub fixtures), and there was LAWN TOOL, and there was STANLEY ... and there was STANLEY CUP. D'oh! "Vessel"! I get it now. Also, if I'd just bothered to dip into the SW corner and see what was there, I woulda gotten both MERYL and GRETA instantly, so ... in reality, I was only "stuck" because I chose to be. Because I refused to move on (for a bit). I was never properly stuck.

Puzzle notes:

• 1A: Hotel room staple (TV SET) — tough one to parse right out of the gate. Its symmetrical counterpart—also hard to parse. Sincerely thought 55A: Quite the party (BIG DO) might be a BASHO. A BASH-O. As in, "That was some swingin' BASHO!," opined the hepcat.
• 1D: Name on the playbill for the 1936 Salzburg Festival (TRAPP) — I'm guessing this is some Sound of Music s**t but "1936 Salzburg Festival" is utterly meaningless to me (yes, here we go: "In 1936, the festival featured a performance by the Trapp Family Singers, whose story was later depicted in the musical The Sound of Music (featuring a scene of the Trapp Family singing at the Felsenreitschule, but inaccurately set in 1938)" (wikipedia). I saw "1936" and "playbill" and five letters and thought GRETA (as in Garbo), making GRETA one of the unlikeliest malapops of my solving career) (a "malapop" is an answer that turns out to be wrong ... only to appear as a correct answer elsewhere in the grid) (see, today, GRETA Van Susteren of TV news).
• 30D: When doubled, a pop nickname (TAY) — your favorite ubiquitous pop star, TAY-TAY, aka Taylor Swift. One of the weirdest things about TAY, as a crossword answer, is its mysterious 11-year disappearance. The TAY is a Scottish river, and it appeared in Farrar, Weng, and Maleska puzzles with reasonable regularity, but once Shortz took over, it just ... vanished. Then suddenly, eleven years later, in 2004, it came back online, and has since appeared eighteen (18) times as the Scottish river; the first appearance of this more current pop star clue was just this year (back in June), so the TAY-TAY frame of reference is solely a Fagliano Era phenomenon. 
• 22A: Fish whose egg casings are called "mermaid's purses" (SKATE) — OK, you got me. I'm curious enough to want to see what these things look like.... whoa. Cool.

In case you didn't know, a SKATE is a kind of ray. Here's a picture of one terrorizing some poor man (from the Macclesfield Psalter (14c. England)):

[LOL the Latin text: propterea non timebimus dum turbabitur terra ("therefore we will not fear, though the earth be troubled")]

Have a monster SKATE-free day. Early voting starts today in NY, so that's what I'll be up to today (in addition to the usual Saturday lazing). See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorldld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Read more...

Red-cheeked Pokémon character / MON 1-15-24 / Not at all "whelmed" / Old name for Tokyo / Bailed-out insurance co. of 2008 / Cover for Claudius / Pain relief brand with an oxymoronic name

Constructor: Peter A. Collins

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: BOUND TO HAPPEN (54A: Inevitable ... or a hint for 19-, 27- and  48-Across) — first words of theme answers are all words that mean "bound" (v.):

Theme answers:

• HOP ON THE TRAIN (19A: Start a subway ride)
• JUMP IN THE SHOWER (27A: Wash oneself quickly)
• LEAP AT THE CHANCE (48A: Seize an opportunity)

Word of the Day: EDO (51A: Old name for Tokyo) —

Edo (Japanese: 江戸, lit. '"bay-entrance" or "estuary"'), also romanized as Jedo, Yedo or Yeddo, is the former name of Tokyo.

Edo, formerly a jōkamachi (castle town) centered on Edo Castle located in Musashi Province, became the de facto capital of Japan from 1603 as the seat of the Tokugawa shogunate. Edo grew to become one of the largest cities in the world under the Tokugawa.

After the Meiji Restoration in 1868 the Meiji government renamed Edo as Tokyo (東京, "Eastern Capital") and relocated the Emperor from the historic capital of Kyoto to the city. The era of Tokugawa rule in Japan from 1603 to 1868 is known as the Edo period. (wikipedia)

• • •

This puzzle is pretty bad. I think about all the established and aspiring constructors out there having their work rejected by the NYTXW on a regular basis, sitting down to solve *this* puzzle and thinking ... "how?" I know I am critical of puzzles on a regular basis, but I actually end up on the positive side most of the time (this year I'm keeping track!). It's actually pretty rare that I think a puzzle is absolutely, irredeemably broken, but this is one of those times. It's Monday, and Mondays are always easy, so it seems possible, if not probable, that the specific badness of the puzzle isn't going to register with solvers the way it does (or can) when badness is coupled with difficulty and successful completion of the puzzle is thwarted. But please, follow along with me here as I explain how, in terms of theme (somewhat) and fill (very much), this puzzle should not have made the grade. To start with, even if it were executed perfectly, the theme feels stale. These are phrases where the first words are all JUMP or synonyms thereof. I suppose they are all ... metaphorical jumps? So maybe that gives them some special elevated status, beyond just being synonyms. Sure, let's extend that benefit of the doubt. OK. Still, not exactly exciting. Worse, though, is that you establish a pattern—something that might, actually, take the theme slightly above the humdrum—and then you absolutely dash it? In your final themer? I'm talking about the grammatical and rhythmic pattern established by the prepositional phrases in the middle of each answer: HOP ON THE ... JUMP IN THE ... LEAP AT THE ... I mean, look at that? You've got a sound pattern, a grammatical pattern, you've changed the preposition each time ... it's not bad. Again, this theme is never gonna be stellar, but after three themers, you've kind of got ... something. But then you wrap it all up with BOUND ... TO HAPPEN!? I know it's the revealer, so maybe it gets to be a different *kind* of answer from the others, but still, all I could think was: Where's that sweet [preposition + THE] action? It was the one little bit of extra that the theme had, its sole real possession, and it goes and squanders it in the final answer. At the climactic moment. Hard, hard oof. And "... TO HAPPEN" ... does that even really express anything specific about the themers (besides the fact that they are verb phrases and thus things ... that happen)? Puzzle would've been better off with just three themers. Or you could've run it around the time Daylight Saving Time starts, and had SPRING FORWARD (13) be the revealer ... because the word meaning "spring" ... is at the "forward" (or front) part of each answer. . . nah, you're right, just keep it to three themers, that's better.

But worse, much worse than this (i.e. the theme execution) is the fill. I need you all to appreciate both how subpar the fill is, and also how completely unnecessary the subparness was. I need you to know that the *reason* the fill is bad is *because* the puzzle chose to be a pangram. That is, it decided to do this dumb feat (include every letter of the alphabet), one that most people don't care about and aren't going to notice, and *because* of that *intentional* move to "achieve" the pangram, we are all "treated" to, let's see: ASAMI SIL (crossing!), ONA UNAWED (?) (crossing!), NUIT OUI (crossing!) HOC QUO (srsly, two Latin partials? Two?!), THO AIG ANNI (more Latin!) ERE EDO ESP CHIA, and then ... not only olden "F-TROOP" but miserably "F"-less TGI to boot. Someone is going to have to explain to me how a pangram is a virtue, how it's at all "worth it," if the resulting grid is this full of gunk. STUNTWOMAN (10D: Daring body double, like Debbie Evans in "The Fast and the Furious") and MALIAOBAMA (29D: White House daughter of 2009-17) are fine, no fouls there, but the rest of the grid ... is a mess. And it's all so unnecessary. You can't (shouldn't) treat the non-marquee (i.e. shorter) answers as just so much filler, an unimportant afterthought, a place to play your largely private pangram games. Your first and only duty is to make the whole grid as smooth and/or sparkly as it can be. Bookmark this puzzle, and then, the next time I talk about a beautifully polished grid (as I have, at least a couple times this year already), please refer back to this one and compare. I mean, just look at *last* Monday's grid. Much better ... even with more theme answers. Clean short fill *and* lovely banks of non-thematic 7-letter answers! Nice grids! They're possible! But you have to care about polish. Not pangrams.

As far as Downs-only solving went today, there were no problems. In case you're wondering "how do you even do that?," here's an example of how even getting a few Downs can lead you to infer longer answers (which then in turn helps you get the Downs you couldn't get before you had any crosses):

Slightly confused about SOIR v. NUIT, but "HOPOS..." looked much worse than "HOPON..." so I went with the latter. Then I only needed a few crosses, as you can see, to figure out what was being hopped on. My brain wanted BUS, but there was too much room. There are no functioning passenger trains where I live (anymore), whereas I take the bus to school every workday. None of this matters, just letting you know how my brain works and why, to the best of my ability. Anyway, Downs-only is a very doable mode of solving—you don't have to get all Downs at first pass. You just. have to get enough to begin to infer some of the crosses, and then let those Acrosses help you get the Downs, and so on, and so on. Today, only PIKACHU gave me any trouble (8D: Red-cheeked Pokémon character), and that's only because I saw -NTER in the cross and decided it had to be ENTER. It did not. It was, in fact, INTER. Once I flipped the "E" to an "I," I remember PIKACHU existed, and that was that. Nothing else in the grid caused a lick of trouble. Except UNAWED. I had UN-[no idea] for a bit. But then TWISTS had to be TWISTS, and there was the "W," and whammo, UNAWED for the "W" (i.e. win). As I'm reliving my solve via narration, I'm realizing how much entertainment value solving Downs-only can add to otherwise not very enjoyable puzzles. Puzzle was still easy, even Downs-only, but there was still ... a kind of interesting unfolding of answers that made things engaging. I hope you liked literally every part of your solving experience more than I did. See you tomorrow. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Read more...

Heat center of the 2000s / WED 12-6-23 / Homemaker from Mayberry / Hoodless pullovers often worn with other layers

Constructor: Peter A. Collins and Bruce Haight

Relative difficulty: It took me 25:17, but I kept stopping because I was bored

THEME: H — All of the clues start with the letter H

Theme answers:

• [Harsh rule, metaphorically] for HEAVY HAND
• [Hybrid genre of country and rap, pejoratively] for HICK HOP
• [Hopping mad sort] for HOT HEAD
• [Hypocrite's perch, perhaps] for HIGH HORSE
• [Hog part] for HAM HOCK
• [Helmet-wearer's potential embarrassment] for HAT HAIR

Word of the Day: [Hagiography subjects: Abbr.] as a clue for  STS —

A hagiography is a biography of a saint or an ecclesiastical leader, as well as, by extension, an adulatory and idealized biography of a preacher, priest, founder, saint, monk, nun or icon in any of the world's religions.

• • •

Hey besties, it's Malaika here, for Malaika MWednesday. I opened the crossword website and saw the name Bruce Haight, and before I opened the puzzle, I kid you not, I said aloud "What grid art will it be this time?" The answer is that there are some weird shapes in the middle that look like two Hs. To go with this, all of the clues start with the letter H. There are also several two-word entries (see above) where both words start with the letter H.

That makes this an easy themeless puzzle, with constrained (read: weirdly phrased) clues. Oh, and it's oversized! (16 rows instead of 15, to accommodate the central shape.) Assessing the technical stats of the grid as though it were a themeless.... it's kind of a bad one! The average word-length is less than 5 (for a themeless, it's good to hover around 5.3 or higher), there are only eight entries that are eight letters or longer (the two longest ones, SMARTY PANTS and THATS SO TRUE were great, for what it's worth), well over half of the entries (44 / 78) were three- or four-letter words, and the clues were stilted rather than fun or tricky.

When a puzzle has a good theme with bad execution, I fault the constructor, but when it has a bad or meh theme, I fault the editor. The constructor gets to pitch whatever idea enters their pretty little head, and then it's the editor's job to be like "Okay but... why.... is this fun? Will this be fun? No? Okay then, let's not publish it." This happened to me a little while ago-- I pitched a puzzle with a 16x16 grid, a 16 in the middle of it, and certain entries clued as decimal versions of their hexadecimal counterparts (I will not get into the details because I promise you it was very boring and not a good idea), and the editor rightfully rejected it with notable comments including "it doesn't excite me" and "I don't find it very appealing" and "I don't think this will work." Amazing work from him, well done!

btw, I'd be a terrible editor

If the clues struck me as particularly effortlessly smooth, that would be one thing. But they're just weird! They're weird! If someone sent me five of these clues out of context ([Having been sloshed out] ???????? Sir?????), I would assume this was the first crossword they had ever made, and it was posted on a blog with no editing. If this puzzle had some deeper meta puzzle or hidden aspect, that would be one thing. But I "got" what was going on within .01 seconds of opening it. If I felt crossword puzzles were simply a mechanism for constructors to prove that they are able to accomplish Something Very Hard, that would be one thing. But I do not feel that way!

I am so grumpy today! Did any of you mistake me for Rex? I just watched "Scrooged" this evening and I am feeling immensely Scrooge-like. I hope I am not visited in a dream by three horrifying ghosts that warn me not to be grumpy on the internet.

Bullets:

• [Hercule Poirot, e.g.] for TEC — NO ONE SAYS THIS. NO ONE SAYS THIS!!!!! Constructors, if you are reading this post, STOP WHAT YOU ARE DOING RIGHT NOW. AND DELETE THIS FROM YOUR WORD LIST. RIGHT NOW!!!!! RIGHT! NOW!
• Actually, I'm using up all my bullet point real estate to complain about the entry TEC
• It is not a thing! And if it was once, it is not anymore. LET'S ALL MOVE ON FROM TEC, OKAY??
• #DeleteTEC

xoxo Malaika

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Read more...

Quiet you quaintly / WED 7-7-21 / Cooler Ghostbusters inspired Hi-C flavor / Overseer of a quadrennial competition / Premium streaming service until 2020 / Ancient Greek festival honoring the god of wine / Nerd on '90s TV / One-percenter suffix

Constructor: Peter A. Collins

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: The Tortoise and the Hare — TORTOISE and HARE are spelled out in circled squares that traverse the grid, visually representing the TORTOISE making it to the other end of the grid (first? at all?); then the moral of the story is your revealer: SLOW AND STEADY / WINS / THE / RACE; plus there are two tacked-on themers:

Theme answers:

• TAKES A NAP (22A: Snoozes (like participant #2 in one classic fable)) ["one"? why not just "a"?]
• LOSES A BET (57A: Wagers unwisely (as participant #2 did))

Word of the Day: DIONYSIA (41D: Ancient Greek festival honoring the god of wine) —

The Dionysia (/daɪəˈnaɪsiə/) was a large festival in ancient Athens in honor of the god Dionysus, the central events of which were the theatrical performances of dramatic tragedies and, from 487 BC, comedies. It was the second-most important festival after the Panathenaia. The Dionysia actually consisted of two related festivals, the Rural Dionysia and the City Dionysia, which took place in different parts of the year. They were also an essential part of the Dionysian Mysteries. (wikipedia)

• • •

As a visual gimmick, this is very clever. Not sure why the tortoise and hare are racing *diagonally*—there's no good representation of the goal or finish line, and if the finish line is simply the other side of the grid, why aren't they running in a straight line??—but the tortoise clearly makes it to the other side, while the hare is still stuck in the fourth line (precisely where he meets the answer TAKES A NAP—nice touch), so I think the visual representation largely works, and it's definitely original / clever. Unfortunately, the puzzle was over before it really began. As soon as I got SLOW A... I knew the rest of the answer, which means I also knew what was going to go in the remaining circled squares, which means the puzzle was essentially over, from a theme-enjoyment standpoint. Done and done (if not done done).

Yes, there ended up being two "bonus" themers, but those were just superfluous verb phrases, dutiful space fillers rather than essential elements of the theme. It's true that having "hare" stop at TAKES A NAP was nice, and having TAKES A NAP and LOSES A BET follow the same answer blanks-a-blank pattern made that pair of answers more unified than they might've been, but they still felt inessential. The gist of the theme reveals itself early, and giving all of the theme away like that just leaves you to fill in the grid, dutifully, which feels more like cleaning up after a party than enjoying the party itself. The fill is OK, hit and miss, but there's nothing much left to experience after the main theme stuff goes in. So this is another case of an interesting concept being somewhat clumsily executed. Too much given away too early, weird semi-aimless diagonal running, and "bonus" theme answers that don't do much but dutifully fill the spaces where we'd expect to find theme content.

I liked a bunch of the longer fill, particularly GREMLIN and then all of the terminal-A stuff: SCAPULA, ELECTRA, DIONYSIA, PALOOKA). These colorful longer answers helped keep the puzzle from truly dragging after the theme discovery had already been accomplished. I am very grateful, though, that I never even saw the ridiculous "OH, DRY UP!" until after I was already finished and reviewing the grid. Never saw the clue, never saw the answer, not sure how that happened—the puzzle was very easy, so crosses must've just taken care of it. But wow, it's so olde-tymey that I can't even place it. Google searches are indicating that yes, it's a real idiom, but the only specific reference I'm getting is to something in the H*rry P*tter books. Quaint! The only thing I like about this answer is that it's on the same line as PALOOKA, which is also quaint, but in a way that I really like. PALOOKA's got a film noir / Damon Runyon vibe, whereas "OH, DRY UP!" sounds stuffy and vaguely British (?). Maybe if I heard some tough dame say it in a crime film, I'd like it, I dunno. It is by far the most original thing in the grid, I'll give it that.

Five things:

• DOORBELL (3D: Don't knock until you've tried it) — I think this clue is trying to pun. I think. I wrote in DOORKNOB, which somehow makes more sense to me: a knock and a DOORBELL do the same thing (tell someone that you want to be let in), so why would you prioritize one over the other. Whereas if the door is open, well, just use the DOORKNOB and there's no need to knock (or ring). Vote DOORKNOB!
• ON LSD (47D: How Timothy Leary spent some time) — hard "no"; delete it from your wordlist. Wearying enough to have to deal with the occasional ONPOT. You can't just put "ON" before every drug and call it a crossword answer (I would, however, accept ONDRUGS ... so ONDRUGS, yes, ONLSD, ONHEROIN, ONLUDES, no
• HBO NOW (48D: Premium TV streaming service until 2020) — so not so much HBO NOW as HBO THEN, then ...
• TECH (60D: ___ support) — had the "H," wrote in ARCH
• ECTO- (35A: ___ Cooler, "Ghostbusters"-inspired Hi-C flavor) — my brain registered that fill-in-the-blank as somebody's name (because "Cooler" was capitalized, because "Ghostbusters" made me think "actor"), and so, since my brain thinks in crossword terms, it was like "ooh, it's that lesser Ghostbuster with the four-letter name, starts with "E," same name as a famous artist ... EGON! Wow, forgot his last name was Cooler, but OK." This is what happens when you don't read the entire clue. The actual Ghostbuster is named EGON Spangler, but that's not important. What's important is that the answer was ECTO-; what's *bizarre* is that EGON ended up actually being in the puzzle!? (58D: Painter Schiele), which has to be one of the strangest wrong-answer-that-turned-out-to-be-the-right-answer-somewhere-else moments I've ever had.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Read more...