Phrase on ID tags / SAT 11-16-24 / Grinchy shout / Valentino competitor, for short / Ballerina who popularized "The Nutcracker" / Veet rival / 2002 movie with the tagline "Higher education just hit a new low" / Headquarters of Talofa Airways / All-Star point guard Young

Constructor: Peter Gordon

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: TAOISEACH (31D: Prime minister of Ireland) —

The Taoiseach [...] is the head of government or prime minister of Ireland. The office is appointed by the President of Ireland upon the nomination of Dáil Éireann (the lower house of the Oireachtas, Ireland's national legislature) and the office-holder must retain the support of a majority in the Dáil to remain in office.

The Irish word taoiseach means "chief" or "leader", and was adopted in the 1937 Constitution of Ireland as the title of the "head of the Government or Prime Minister". It is the official title of the head of government in both English and Irish, and is not used for the prime ministers of other countries, who are instead referred to in Irish by the generic term príomh-aire. The phrase an Taoiseach is sometimes used in an otherwise English-language context, and means the same as "the Taoiseach". (wikipedia) [pronounced something like "TEA-sheck"]

• • •

This felt hard, but hard in a way that Saturdays are supposed to be hard. As with yesterday's puzzle, this one was a bit too much of a trivia test for my liking, leaning heavily into proper nouns, many of which I'd simply never heard of in my life. Peter's puzzles often vex me on precisely this level. He created a "Celebrity" game app (focused on celebrity names) and writes a regular Newsflash crossword puzzle that is (by design) chock full o' names from very recent news headlines (lots of "who died this week?" and "who won a sporting event this week?," stuff like that). With "Celebrity," you expect celebrities. That's ... literally the name of the game. And with the Newsflash puzzles, again, you expect to get hit with proper nouns of recent noteworthiness. In my regular-ass NYTXW crossword, I have somewhat less patience for extensive name tests. There's also, if I'm being honest, some element of my simply not enjoying being reminded of how ignorant I am of soooooo many names. Today, there were two names, long names, that I'd never seen before in my life. And the second name ended up not being a name at all. Well, not a specific person's name, but the name of a political office. I assumed that TAOISEACH was the name of the current Irish prime minister, and I was like "OK, first of all, wow, and second of all ... is that a last name or a full name, first and last? And if it's first and last, dear lord, where does the first end and the last begin?" Literally every letter of that had to come from crosses. Totally in the dark, I was. The other name (an actual name) that was a ??? to me was TALLCHIEF (17A: Ballerina who popularized "The Nutcracker"). Turns out she's hugely famous, "America's first prima ballerina." So now you know that Irish politics and ballet are really not my thing. I can only have so many things. There are so many things. Today, the place names / activist names / sports names / movie names / brand names knocked me around quite a bit. Provided all the difficulty. Luckily, the non-name part of the puzzle was pretty easy, so it all averaged out to a very Saturday-like Saturday.

Even with stuff I did know, or had heard of, parsing problems pummeled me today. I wish I could show you all a real-time version of me trying to put together APIA, SAMOA (14A: Headquarters of Talofa Airways), LOL. I had A-IAS-MO- and still no idea. "That ... is no city or country that I know." Turns out it's both city *and* country. Oy. Nearly as funny was me trying to put JOAN OF ARC together. I had the JOAN part but thought I was simply looking for the last name of someone named "Joan." You know, a Didion or a Baez or a Rivers or a Cusack or something. But none of those people were alive in 1915, so they were out, and I couldn't think of other famous Joans ... again, oy. I forgot that JAZZ came in orchestra form, so while the JAZZ part was easy, the ORCHESTRAS part took work. Wanted TAKES ILL before FEELS ILL, which I should've known was wrong since TAKES CARE was already in the grid. I wanted COOKSETS but didn't trust the SETS part. I also didn't fully trust the COOK part because the "K" was coming from 33A: Holy book, in one spelling, which I wanted to be KORAN but which I thought couldn't possibly be KORAN because that's a standard English spelling, and the clue seemed to want some variant. Why else add "in one spelling?" That is not a typical cluing move for answers that have multiple acceptable spellings (as KORAN does). Unnecessarily confusing, that one. 

For all that TAOISEACH and TALLCHIEF flummoxed me, their sections were not the hard sections of the puzzle. TAOISEACH in particular just seemed to come together, somewhat quickly, rather magically, and I just had to trust that all those letters were correct. The area that put up the most resistance was, rather, the SW corner, where I finished up. This is partly Joan's fault, but also ... TAKES ILL before FEELS ILL (44A: Goes green, maybe), blanking on BELLA (42D: Model Hadid who wore a spray-on dress at a 2022 Paris fashion show), MCATS for ORALS (53A: Hurdles for would-be doctors), LEI for LOA (50D: Mahalo nui ___" (words from a grateful Hawaiian)), and ... well, no idea about ACT AS (55A: Represent). All this chaos had me doubting even the two answers down there that I had correct: LADLE and HAMMERED AT. Actually tested HAMMERED ON at one point. Another lesser but still significant slow spot was everything around SLACKERS, a movie I did not know existed until today (20A: 2002 movie with the tagline "Higher education just hit a new low"). I had this moment of "... SLACKERS? ... but that's ... that's from 1991, not 2002." Nope, I was thinking of the singular, SLACKER, Richard Linklater's first major film. SLACKERS, on the other hand ... as of this very second, I still have no idea. Hang on ... [searching] ... Huh. Yeah, I'm looking at the wikipedia page for this movie, and it is not registering at all. I know a lot of the actors (Jason Segel, Jason Schwartzman ... Mamie van Doren!!!?), but it looks like some ill-conceived American Pie rip-off:

It bombed at the box office, and the reviews—well, "unkind" would be a kind way of putting it. From wikipedia: 

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, Slackers has overall "Rotten" rating of 10%, with an average score of 3.1 out of 10, based on 105 reviews. The site's critical consensus reads, "Another teen comedy with little on its mind but moving to the next gross-out gag, Slackers strains for laughs and features grating characters." On Metacritic, the film holds a 12/100 based on 28 critics, meaning “overwhelming dislike”. A few critics noted the dialogue as a positive, but not sufficiently good to warrant attention. // 

Philip French commented that "Slackers makes American Pie look like The Importance of Being Earnest." // 

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times awarded the film a zero out of four stars and described the film as "a dirty movie. Not a sexy, erotic steamy or even smutty movie.

So ... a 20+-year-old movie that fell in the woods and made no sound but pfft. Is that fun? Again, I just don't understand turning the ordinary word SLACKERS into a proper noun here. It's Not Like Your Puzzle Is Hurting For Proper Nouns.

Additional notes:

• 32A: Italian province on the Swiss border (COMO) — I know there's a Lake COMO. That is the only way I got this answer. More trivia.
• 35A: Phrase on ID tags (FAMOUS POTATOES) — the highlight of the puzzle for me. This clue and the clue on SCHULZ (15D: Woodstock artist) I found absolutely delightful. "ID" is of course the state code for Idaho, which has "FAMOUS POTATOES" written on its license plates (or "tags"). And Charles SCHULZ is the creator of Peanuts, which featured Snoopy and his little yellow-bird sidekick, Woodstock.

• 38A: Wordle score that elicits the message "Genius" (ONE) — good clue but man that "Genius" thing is stupid. "Ridiculously lucky" should be the message.
• 39A: Pulse, e.g. (SEED) — argh, see I knew this was going to be the plant version of pulse, but I ... forgot what pulse was, exactly. In my head, it was something like a bean sprout. I had -EED and actually wanted WEED at one point. But pulses are just legumes. "When [legumes are] used as a dry grain for human consumption, the seeds are also called pulses" (wikipedia)
• 40A: Veet rival (NAIR) — It was that or NEET, which is awfully close to Veet, spellingwise. Veet seems like a terrible name (like a product that removes hair solely (!) from your feet), but then so do NAIR and NEET so what do I know.
• 34A: Does a job for a summer? (ADDS) — kind of awkward phrasing here, but that “summer” gag is old as the hills: “summer” = one who does sums, or ADDS things up.
• 5D: Grinchy shout (BAH) — famously, iconically a Scroogey shout, so BAH to this clue.
• 13D: Valentino competitor, for short (YSL) — me staring down Y-L here: "YUL Brenner?! But YUL Brynner and Rudolph Valentino weren't even working at the same time, how... oh." Valentino here is a luxury fashion house, as is YSL (Yves Saint Laurent).

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Icelandic poet Sturluson / WED 9-25-24 / Senokot alternative / Dance counterpart of the Whip / County in northeastern Nevada / Pioneer in show recording / Word after double or day / AIDS researcher who was Time's 1996 Man of the Year / Tool with a bubble / Haitian unit of currency

Constructor: Peter Gordon

Relative difficulty: Medium to Medium-Challenging (names names names)

THEME: Wall of Sound ... — the answers on the outer edges of the grid are made entirely out of the notes (do re mi fa etc.) of the musical scale. The puzzle has not one not two but three revealers:

Theme answers:

• FULL SCALE (30A: Life-size ... or a hint to this puzzle's theme)
• RINGTONES (36A: Phone numbers? ... or a hint to this puzzle's theme)
• SIDE NOTES (45A: Marginalia ... or a hint to this puzzle's theme)

The wall (clockwise from the NW corner):

• RE DO 
• SO FA
• FA LA
• MI RE
• LA RE DO
• DO DO
• MI SO
• SO RE
• SO SO
• RE TI RE

Word of the Day: DAVID HO (3D: AIDS researcher who was Time's 1996 Man of the Year) —

David Da-i Ho (Chinese: 何大一; born November 3, 1952) is a Taiwanese American AIDS researcher, physician and virologist who has made a number of scientific contributions to the understanding and treatment of HIV infection. He championed for combination anti-retroviral therapy instead of single therapy, which turned HIV from an absolute terminal disease into a chronic disease.

David Ho was born in Taiwan in 1952 and immigrated to the United States in 1965, where he was educated at California Institute of Technology and Harvard Medical School (through the Harvard–MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology) before getting his clinical training at UCLA School of Medicine and Massachusetts General Hospital.

He is the founding scientific director of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center and the Clyde and Helen Wu Professor of Medicine at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, both housed at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. (wikipedia)

• • •

Rare that I wipe out right out of the box on a *Wednesday* puzzle, but that is what happened today, and though no other section gave me quite that much trouble, I did feel like I was working somewhat harder than usual to put the answers together today. Not hard hard. Just harder. There was at least some resistance all over, which I don't mind, but things have been so easy of late, across the board, that today's difficulty felt oddly elevated. Certainly, where the trivia / proper nouns were concerned, it felt more Thursday / Friday / Saturday than Wednesday. DAVID HO seems eminently worth knowing, but know him I did not, and encountering him first thing, in a section where I was already having some trouble (no idea what "show recording" meant, exactly in 16A: Pioneer in show recording—I wanted a person's name; hard (baseball) clue on RETIRE (1D: Strike out, perhaps), that slowed me down. I couldn't even get out of that section smoothly because the primary connecting word (that is, the word that was going to get me out of the NW and connect me to the rest of the grid) was *also* some trivia I didn't know or had forgotten (namely, GOURDE) (24D: Haitian unit of currency). Also didn't know GUTE (at least not the spelling ... GUTT?) and would not have remembered EDUARDO, probably, if I hadn't had a few of those last letters in place before I looked at the clue. I knew SNORRI, but then I'm a medievalist. I'm guessing most of you ... aren't? Twenty-six years since SNORRI's made an appearance in the NYTXW. He is a 12th/13th-century Icelandic poet and scholar who is believed to have written or compiled most of the Prose EDDA (or just EDDA), a very important source of Norse mythology (as well as a stock piece of crosswordese). "He was assassinated in 1241 by men claiming to be agents of the King of Norway." Fun fact!

As for the theme, it's actually quite elegantly done. The words one can make out of the scale aren't exactly scintillating, but the visual created by the *arrangement* of those words is at least interesting, and the triple revealer (!) more than makes up for any dullness in the note-answers themselves. Also, no all-note answer in the grid anywhere *except* the outer edge ... it's a nice touch. Maybe that was intentional, or particularly hard to do, but I like when the constructor keeps the theme entirely inside the theme ... no stray or accidental themers roaming around. And the revalers are pretty good, with clever wordplay all around. There are "notes" on the "side" of the grid, there are "tones" forming a "ring" around the grid, there's a "scale" ... hmm ... that answer doesn't work quite as well; that is, "full" doesn't really express the structure formed by the notes, the way "ring" and "side" do. But you do (eventually) get a "full" scale, i.e. every note from "do" on up and back to "do" again. Side note: I've been so indoctrinated by crosswords to believe that the note is spelled "SOL" that "SO" now looks weird and wrong to me. The fact that the three revealers all fit symmetrically, and that two of them drill directly into the outer wall, makes this puzzle architecturally elegant. Architecturally complicated puzzles can often feel fussy, with theme and non-theme answers alike feeling forced and awkward. Not so today. There's maybe more crosswordese-leaning stuff than I'd like (an ICI, an ESSO, a NAENAE in the ORRIN ODEA, etc.), but on the whole the grid holds up well, with lots of varied and even colorful answers (ANY OLD AVOCADO! ONE-OFF BISTROS!)

Bullet points:

• 21A: Stock quote? (MOO) — that's what the cow says. The cow says MOO. If you quote a cow, that is likely the quote you're going to get. If you got a different quote, I'd be a little surprised. ("Stock" here means "livestock," of course)
• 48A: Tool with a bubble (LEVEL) — Gotta get the bubble in the little liquid tube to sit inside the little marked area. That's how you know you're level. I think most levels are electronic now, but since I don't use levels on a regular (or even irregular) basis, I'm not a reliable authority.
• 55A: :"Toy Story" dinosaur voiced by Wallace Shawn (REX) — I of course knew that REX was the dinosaur in Toy Story, but I'd completely forgotten he was voiced by the great Wallace Shawn. What a career. From Manhattan to My Dinner with Andre to The Princess Bride to Clueless, an absolute delight, that guy.

• 9D: Fan fare? (FRANKS) — fans (of baseball) might eat FRANKS (i.e. hot dogs), which are common ballpark fare.
• 39A: Word after double or day (BED) — Peter really will sneak baseball references in wherever he can.

• 54D: Bowl feature (TIER) — think "bowl" as in "arena." The Hollywood Bowl, that kind of bowl. There are different levels (or TIERs) of seating. This clue actually gave me slight trouble. I had the "R" and ... nope, no help.
• 38D: Senokot alternative (EX-LAX) — eight appearances now for EX-LAX. Still no ENEMA, though. "ENEMA ... talk about great letters!" RIP, Merl Reagle.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. this blog is now legally an adult. As you know, it takes a village, so thank you, villagers.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Archnemesis of the Avengers / MON 4-8-24 / Tube that uses gravity to transfer liquids / Dip with avocado, casually / Radioactive element discovered by the Curies / 1997 U2 hit that would be apt to play during a 46-Across / 2007 Santana hit that would be apt to play during a 46-Across

Constructor: Peter Gordon

Relative difficulty: Easy (solved Downs-only)

THEME: TOTAL ECLIPSE (46A) — three songs that would be "apt" to play during a TOTAL ECLIPSE:

Theme answers:

• "MOONSHADOW" (17A: 1971 Cat Stevens hit that would be apt to play during a 46-Across)
• "INTO THE NIGHT" (23A: 2007 Santana hit that would be apt to play during a 46-Across)
• "STARING AT THE SUN" (36A: 1997 U2 hit that would be apt to play during a 46-Across)
• "TOTAL ECLIPSE / OF THE HEART" (46A: Event across the U.S. on 4/8/24 ... and, with 57-Across, 1983 Bonnie Tyler hit that would be apt to play during a 46-Across)

Word of the Day: POLONIUM (40A: Radioactive element discovered by the Curies) —

Polonium is a chemical element; it has symbol Po and atomic number 84. A rare and highly radioactivemetal (although sometimes classified as a metalloid) with no stable isotopes, polonium is a chalcogen and chemically similar to selenium and tellurium, though its metallic character resembles that of its horizontal neighbors in the periodic table: thallium, lead, and bismuth. Due to the short half-life of all its isotopes, its natural occurrence is limited to tiny traces of the fleeting polonium-210 (with a half-life of 138 days) in uranium ores, as it is the penultimate daughter of natural uranium-238. Though longer-lived isotopes exist, such as the 124 years half-life of polonium-209, they are much more difficult to produce. Today, polonium is usually produced in milligram quantities by the neutron irradiation of bismuth. Due to its intense radioactivity, which results in the radiolysis of chemical bonds and radioactive self-heating, its chemistry has mostly been investigated on the trace scale only.

Polonium was discovered on July 18, 1898 by Marie Skłodowska-Curie and Pierre Curie, when it was extracted from the uranium ore pitchblende and identified solely by its strong radioactivity: it was the first element to be so discovered. Polonium was named after Marie Curie's homeland of Poland. Polonium has few applications, and those are related to its radioactivity: heaters in space probes, antistatic devices, sources of neutrons and alpha particles, and poison e.g. poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko. It is extremely dangerous to humans. (wikipedia)

• • •

Greetings from just south of the Path of Totality. There's a campus-wide viewing party from noon to 3pm, and even though I don't teach today, I might go check it out. Free anti-blindness glasses and everything! I thought this puzzle was ingenious, primarily in the way that it handled the revealer. I can't remember ever seeing an answer that was a revealer in its first part, but then ... went on to be a completely distinct theme answer in its ... totality! "OF THE HEART" is totally eclipsed in the revealer, but then comes out at 57-Across. It's such a weird little flourish. I love it. My only problem with the puzzle is that I think it's using the term "hit" very loosely. Well, not with the Cat Stevens and Bonnie Tyler—those are both classics. But "INTO THE NIGHT," what? "STARING AT THE SUN," what? I know the former only as a very creepy 1980 Benny Mardones song (a real, two-time (!?!) Top 20 hit!), and the latter ... the latter, I don't know at all. In a bizarre coincidence, both the Santana and the U2 "hits" peaked at 26 on the US charts. And "MOONSHADOW" only hit No. 30?! But ... but ... "MOONSHADOW" I know like the back of my hand, why? Maybe because it's been on every Cat Stevens compilation album for half a century. That song is more my generation than the other two, I guess (even though I was a baby when it came out (US 1971)). I can sing you the entirety of "MOONSHADOW" but don't even know the tune for "INTO THE NIGHT" or "STARING AT THE SUN." This makes the climactic Bonnie Tyler song the only *genuine* hit of the bunch—No. 1 for four weeks in 1983, and now an all-time epic-pop classic. So the hits aren't all that hitty today, but at least the puzzle closed big, which is what you gotta do with a themed puzzle! A big finish goes a long way toward making up for any small blemishes or infelicities.

["She's just sixteen years old / 'Leave her alone,' / They sayyyyy" [note: "They" are right]]

The only other comment I have about the puzzle as a whole is that it was astonishingly easy to solve Downs-only. I went from top to bottom of the puzzle and balked at only three (!!?!?!?) answers: THANOS, SIPHON, ESCHEW. That first one, I really should've known. I just blanked and had to wait for the answers around it to fill in. As for SIPHON, somehow the clue didn't trigger any associations (43D: Tube that uses gravity to transfer liquids). And ESCHEW, while a great word, was simply not top-of-the-brain for me at 45D: Deliberately avoid. I think Downs-only was the way to go today. In the Acrosses, as I said above, two of those songs were unknowns to me, and I doubt I could've come up with POLONIUM very quickly either. But since most of the Downs were short, and short answers tend to be very very easy on Mondays, I absolutely sliced through this thing. Not necessarily the most scintillating experience (short fill rarely gets up to "scintillating"), but it was great fun to watch the themers come into view, and especially to get to the revealer, which felt kind of magical.

["Turn around..."]

Be safe out there today, especially if you are driving to an eclipse-viewing destination. It's gonna be nuts. We've had "ARRIVE EARLY / STAY LATE" on the illuminated highway traffic signs for weeks now. All my best to every public official who has to deal with the madness. Oh, and congratulations to Paolo Pasco, the newest American Crossword Puzzle Tournament champion! He's my daughter's age! Why am I shouting!? Congrats, Paolo!

[photo by Josh Sevin]

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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National park, in Southwest Utah / TUES 2-13-24 / Garment for the Grim Reaper / Uncouth sort / Captain von Trapp in “The Sound of Music,” e.g.

Hola, everyone, it’s Clare for this random Tuesday in February! I’m currently in México celebrating my sister’s 30th birthday (on Valentine’s Day). She was born in México because my parents lived here for a few years when she was born, so we thought this would be a fitting trip for the big milestone. It’s been an absolutely incredible trip so far (not least because of the sunny and warm weather) — the food is to die for, the drinks are delicious and cheap, and the city is beautiful and very walkable. We watched the Super Bowl yesterday in a bar where we split the most mediocre burger imaginable and watched the game in Spanish. So we’ve been plenty busy, but there’s still always time for crosswords! 

Anywho, on to the puzzle…

Constructor: Peter Gordon

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: TEAM PLAYERS — (49A: Ones unconcerned with individual achievements ... or what both words in the answers to the starred clues are examples of) — Both words of the answers are the singular form of the name of the team in a professional sports league.

Theme answers:

• BLUE FLAME (3D: *Indication that a gas stove is functioning properly [N.H.L.]) 
• BROWN BEAR (11D: *Grizzly, for one [N.F.L.]) 
• SUN KING (33A: *Louis XIV's nickname [N.B.A.]) 
• GUARDIAN ANGEL (54A: *Clarence in "It's a Wonderful Life," e.g. [M.L.B.])

Word of the Day:  CALYPSO (26A: Harry Belafonte album whose first song is "Day-O") —

Calypso is the third studio album by recording artist Harry Belafonte, released by RCA Victor (LPM-1248) in 1956. The album became his second consecutive number-one album on the Billboard Top Pop Albums chart, where it peaked for 31 weeks. Calypso was the first Long Play record album to sell over one million copies. The first track "Day-O (Banana Boat Song)" largely contributed to the success of the album and has long been Belafonte's signature song, the single reaching number five on Billboard's Pop chart. (Wiki)

• • •

That was a clever theme! I liked that it sorta kinda tied to the Super Bowl (not that the BROWNs have ever been to one…) in that all of the clue answers deal with sports. (I feel like I should note: I’m a Steelers fan, not a Commanders fan.) I love how the clue answers can stand alone and are clever in and of themselves — especially SUN KING and GUARDIAN ANGEL. And the revealer was likewise great. This might be my favorite Tuesday theme I’ve written about in a long while. 

I’d never heard of DOG TV (42A: Streaming channel sometimes shown at grooming salons and veterinarians' offices), but the clue was fair enough and wasn’t too hard to get. Likewise, I hadn’t heard of “Father STU” (45A: (2022 Mark Wahlberg film)), which made that section a bit rough (not ruff). I was able to get DUM DUMS (42D: Branded lollipops), though, which I hadn’t thought about in forever but used to love as a kid. 8D: "That was too close for comfort!" as WHEW rather than “phew” threw me for a bit in that section, especially because all I could think of for 5A was “roe” rather than getting SPAWN. (Yes, we did have sushi today for lunch. It was incredible.) 

I still don’t really get LARRY Bird (51D). I know who he is, but I feel like he wasn’t really stuffing the net as much as some other players? Although, I think it’s nice to continue on with the sports theme. Similarly with AROD at 44A: Slugger who ended his career four shy of the 700 home run club. Take those answers, along with KNEE PAD (20A: Piece of volleyball gear), EPEE (41A: Sword with a three-sided blade), and ESPN (65A: "Monday Night Countdown" cable channel), and you’ve got yourselves a veritable sports theme. 

The word NETIZEN (9D; Redditor, e.g.) was fun to have in the puzzle. I chuckled at 37D: "All rise" undoer as BE SEATED. ARGO (and “Fargo”) for 30D: Best Picture winner that becomes an earlier Best Picture nominee when an "F" is added to the front was great. And I liked having SHIATSU (5D: Therapy whose name is Japanese for "finger pressure") in there. 

There was otherwise some crosswordese that was bland, but I truly didn’t mind given the theme.

Misc.:

• My sister tells me that UCLA (14A: Sch. near Bel Air) just found its new football head coach. In her words, “Oh, well, I don’t have to care anymore because the Bruins aren't in the Pac-12… Have fun in the Big 10.” 
• I was reminded about the cultural phenomenon of “A DINGO ate my baby.” (23D: Wild canine of Australia) I didn’t know this was a real phrase until a few years ago when I looked it up, and it turns out it was this tragic event where a DINGO took a nine-week-old baby from the campsite where she was with her parents. The mom went to prison for several years because people didn’t believe that a DINGO had taken the baby. But when the baby’s jacket was found a few years after the incident right near a DINGO den, the mom was immediately exonerated and released. I just went down a deep hole re-researching this. 
•  I remember getting a green IPOD (63A: Apple product from 2001 to 2022) mini when I was younger, and I was pretty darn obsessed with that thing. 
•  Margaret ATWOOD (10D) might be best known for “The Handmaid’s Tale” these days, but I’ll die on the hill that her best book is “The Blind Assassin.”

And that’s it from me! Have a great rest of your February.

Signed, Clare Carroll, una chica muy cansada ahora

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Hotel Bible name / TUE 12-12-23 / Comic actor Bowen / Coup d'état that's been judicially suspended / Longtime manufacturer of Sweethearts / Rock band on Butt-head's T-shirt

Constructor: Peter Gordon

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (***for a Tuesday***) (just a bit harder than your average Tuez)

THEME: FINISHING SCHOOL (61A: Where social graces were once taught ... or a hint to this puzzle's theme) — "SCH." (the abbr. for "SCHOOL") is added to the "finish" (i.e. end) of familiar phrases to create wacky phrases, clued wackily (i.e. "?"-style):

Theme answers:

• GRUMPY OLD MENSCH (17A: Crotchety geezer with a heart of gold?)
• SEWING KITSCH (26A: "Home Sweet Home" needlepoint pillow, e.g.?)
• STAYED PUTSCH (47A: Coup d'état that's been judicially suspended?)

Word of the Day: Pascal's triangle (16A: Start and end of every row in Pascal's triangle => ONES) —

In mathematics, Pascal's triangle is a triangular array of the binomial coefficients arising in probability theory, combinatorics, and algebra. In much of the Western world, it is named after the French mathematician Blaise Pascal, although other mathematicians studied it centuries before him in Persia, India, China, Germany, and Italy.

The rows of Pascal's triangle are conventionally enumerated starting with row  at the top (the 0th row). The entries in each row are numbered from the left beginning with  and are usually staggered relative to the numbers in the adjacent rows. The triangle may be constructed in the following manner: In row 0 (the topmost row), there is a unique nonzero entry 1. Each entry of each subsequent row is constructed by adding the number above and to the left with the number above and to the right, treating blank entries as 0. For example, the initial number of row 1 (or any other row) is 1 (the sum of 0 and 1), whereas the numbers 1 and 3 in row 3 are added to produce the number 4 in row 4.

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***ATTENTION: READERS AND FELLOW SOLVERS IN SYNDICATION (if it's currently mid-January, that's you!)*** : Hello from the first properly wintry week of the season in Central New York! It's January, which means it's time once again for my annual week-long pitch for financial contributions to the blog. Every year I ask readers to consider what the blog is worth to them on an annual basis and give accordingly. So ... 17 years ... not bad. At this time last year, I was recovering from COVID and still dealing with the very fresh grief brought on by the untimely death of my cat, Olive. I was very grateful for the blog at that point, since it grounded me in routine and gave me a place where I could lose myself in a pastime I love, and share that love with others. OK, yes, true, I don't always *love* crosswords. Sometimes it's more hate-love or love-hate or "Why are you being like this, you stupid puzzle!?" It ain't all positive vibes, as you know. But I realized last year that part of what makes this blog so fun for me, and what makes it a solace to many readers, is the sense of commiseration it provides. Sometimes the puzzle thrills you, and maybe I agree with you, and maybe I don't; and sometimes it infuriates you, and maybe I agree with you, and maybe I don't. But either way, the blog is here; it's *always* here. You get to have your feelings validated, or you get to shake your head at my errant judgment and often breathtaking ignorance, but either way, you get to share an experience that's an important part of your daily life, and maybe you learn something new. Above all, I hope you feel that there is a real person with a real life and real emotions and (very) real human flaws who's telling you what it was *really* like for him to solve the puzzle. I never wanted to be an expert, offering some kind of bloodless know-it-all advice and analysis. I wanted blood. Blood on the page. There will be blood! ... But also, music videos. And Words of the Day. And, if you hang around long enough, cat pictures. Like this one:

This is Ida (she put herself in the bin, I swear). Ida is the happy sequel to last year's grief. At the beginning of January, I was mourning. By the end of January, I was still mourning, but now I had a new companion (as did my other cat, Alfie, who *really* needed one). Why am I talking about my cats? Because they are constant, they give shape and rhythm to my day, and I love them even if they sometimes drive me crazy. Just like crossword puzzles! (See that! Segue! This is why you should pay me the big bucks!) 

However much I love writing this blog (and I do, a lot), it is, in fact, a job. This blog has covered the NYTXW every day, without fail, for 17 years, and except for two days a month (when my regular stand-ins Mali and Clare write for me), and an occasional vacation or sick day (when I hire substitutes to write for me), it's me who's doing the writing. Every day. At very ... let's say, inconvenient hours (my alarm goes off most mornings at 3:45am). Over the years, I have received all kinds of advice about "monetizing" the blog, invitations to turn it into a subscription-type deal à la Substack or Patreon. But that sort of thing has never felt right for me. I like being out here on Main, on this super old-school blogging platform, just giving it away for free and relying on conscientious addicts like yourselves to pay me what you think the blog's worth. It's just nicer that way. 

How much should you give? Whatever you think the blog is worth to you on a yearly basis. Whatever that amount is is fantastic. Some people refuse to pay for what they can get for free. Others just don't have money to spare. All are welcome to read the blog—the site will always be open and free. But if you are able to express your appreciation monetarily, here are three options. First, a Paypal button (which you can also find in the blog sidebar on the homepage):

Second, a mailing address (checks can be made out to "Michael Sharp" or "Rex Parker"):

Rex Parker c/o Michael Sharp
54 Matthews St
Binghamton, NY 13905

The third, increasingly popular option is Venmo; if that's your preferred way of moving money around, my handle is @MichaelDavidSharp (the last four digits of my phone are 4878, in case Venmo asks you, which I guess it does sometimes, when it's not trying to push crypto on you, what the hell?!)

All Paypal contributions will be gratefully acknowledged by email. All Venmo contributions will get a little heart emoji, at a minimum :) All snail mail contributions will be gratefully acknowledged with hand-written postcards. I. Love. Snail Mail. I love seeing your gorgeous handwriting and then sending you my awful handwriting. It's all so wonderful. My daughter (Ella Egan) has once again designed my annual thank-you cards, and once again those cards feature (wait for it) cats! My cats: Alfie & Ida. This year, an elegant set of five!

These really capture the combination of beauty and goofiness that I love in cats (and puzzles, frankly). I'd say "Collect All Five!" but every snail-mail contributor will get just one and (hopefully) like it! Please note: I don't keep a "mailing list" and don't share my contributor info with anyone. And if you give by snail mail and (for some reason) don't want a thank-you card, just indicate "NO CARD." Again, as ever, I'm so grateful for your readership and support. Please know that your support means a lot to me and my family. Now on to today's puzzle... 

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Spent far too long after I'd finished wondering how the "-OOL" part of FINISHING SCHOOL figured into the theme. I could see the "SCH"s tacked on the ends there, but what the hell was the "-OOL" doing. Did "OOL" somehow stand for something? Was there some kind of pun going on? Was it a metacommentary on the puzzle itself: "Finishing's ... cool?" It was only after a minute or so of pu(t)sching around ideas that I realized "oh ... SCH. is the abbr. for "school" so ... that's it. SCH. actually represents the totality of the word 'school' ... OK, then." This was a somewhat deflating realization, as I don't think I have ever seen SCH. used as the abbr. for "school" outside of crossword puzzles, where it's used in that capacity all the time, both in clues (to signify an abbr. answer, e.g. [Big Apple sch.] for NYU), and in the grid (70 appearances of SCH. in the Shortz Era, plus an additional four appearances of SCHS., yikes). Hard for me to work up any love for that particular abbr. Weird that what's "finishing" the answers is just ... half of the word "SCHOOL." I know I'm supposed to understand that SCH. *means* "SCHOOL," but that "-OOL"' is still bugging me. Not cool. As for the wackiness level on these answers ... starts out good and kinda flags as the grid goes along, with STAYED PUTSCH being kinda clunky and grammatically awkward. Plus PUTSCH is by far the least common / familiar of these words. Haven't heard it in years. Feels like it belongs more to a bygone era (kinda like "FINISHING SCHOOL," which I imagine many younger solvers are hearing about for the first time today). STAYED PUTSCH does feel like the wackiest answer, and generally I prefer big wacky over small wacky, if you're gonna bother doing wacky, but STAYED PUTSCH was somehow the least enjoyable of the bunch. Maybe I just don't like thinking about the violent overthrow of the government these days. It's possible.

Between the "?" wackiness of the themers and the proper noun trivia today, this played a tad on the hard side. By which I mean I still solved it very quickly relative to, say, your average Thursday. Under five minutes, probably. It's hard for me to gauge "difficulty" on easy puzzles because the margins are so slim. 30 seconds is a *lot* of time, for me, on a Tuesday. Anyway, I don't time myself any more, but I could feel that this one was a little on the slow side. I know Bowen YANG but forgot him— took "Bowen" as a last name and got a bit tangled up. I also know Annie POTTS very well, but Young Sheldon, LOL, the idea that I would've watched one second of that is hilarious. I barely know it exists (existed? see, I don't know). But Annie POTTS is great in Designing Women, as well as in that other thing I saw her in ... probably Pretty in Pink:

Didn't know what a Pascal's triangle was, so ONES was just an educated guess based on crosses. Didn't know if the Greek goddess of peace was IRENE or IRENA (knew it was one of 'em) (29D: Greek goddess of peace), so I had to wait there. Absolutely did the NILLA / NECCO conflation again, where it comes out NECCA (12D: Longtime manufacturer of Sweethearts)—I told that no matter how hard I tried to distinguish them in my mind, I would confuse these brand names in perpetuity, and this puzzle has proved me correct. Normally I like being correct. Not so much in this case. Why must NILLA and NECCO both make disc-shaped edibles!!!!? This only heightens the confusion! Sigh. Had REEL (?) before ROLL at 7D: Tape dispenser insert. I think that does it for hiccups and slip-ups. The grid as a whole is actually a bit livelier and more interesting than most Tuesday grids. That NW corner is particularly lovely, with GRUNT WORK and LIP LINER making an intriguing Odd Couple. Gonna make coffee and sit in a dark room with my Christmas tree and my cats until the sun comes up. Here is Max the Cat and his tree (sent to me by reader Donna S.). 

[grumpy old catsch]

I can tell you right now that if you send me pics of your animals in holiday settings, I will post them. All of them. Happy happy, see you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, Crotchety Geezer With A Heart of Gold 

P.S. I love the idea of someone out there going "Who ... or What ... is Butt-head?" (35D: Rock band on Butt-head's T-shirt = AC/DC). Beavis & Butt-head were iconic when I was in my '20s but I have no idea how lasting their fame has been. Looks like the show has been recently revived on Paramount+, which also released the movie Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe in 2022, so Butt-head is a more current cultural reference than I thought.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Funny joke in slang / TUE 3-14-23 / Truck brand with a bulldog in its logo / Children's TV character with a falsetto voice / Composer of a sacred song / Flavoring in the German Christmas cookie springerle

Constructor: Peter Gordon

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: MARCH MADNESS (51A: Annual college basketball tourney, rounds of which can be found in the circled squares at their appropriate numbers) — an NCAA Basketball Tournament theme with various "rounds" of the tourney (FINAL Four, ELITE Eight, SWEET Sixteen) appearing in circles (i.e. "rounds"!) at their appropriate number (i.e. FINAL at Four-Down, ELITE at Eight-Down, SWEET at Sixteen-Across):

Additional theme answers:

• 20A: Process of picking winners in 51-Across (BRACKETOLOGY)
• 38A: What lower-seeded 51-Across participants hope to become (CINDERELLA TEAMS)

Word of the Day: NIA DaCosta (37A: "Candyman" director DaCosta) —

Nia DaCosta (born November 8, 1989) is an American film director and screenwriter. She wrote and directed the crime thriller film Little Woods (2018), winning the Nora Ephron Prize at the Tribeca Film Festival. She also directed the horror film Candyman (2021). In August 2020, DaCosta was hired to direct The Marvels, becoming the youngest filmmaker to direct a Marvel film, beating the record set by Ryan Coogler. [...] DaCosta was the first African American woman to have a #1 film at the American box office. (wikipedia)

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My feelings about this one ... you could say they bounced around. Speaking of basketball references, why in the world is AREA clued in reference to a tennis court!?!? (28D: 2,808 square feet, for a tennis court). If ever there were an opportunity for a little theme bonus answer—one that would not have felt forced at all—that was it. And we get tennis? Strange. (Note: the AREA of a standard NBA / NCAA basketball court is 4,700 square feet). Anyway, I started out thinking "ew, those teeny throwaway corners, wasted space, aesthetically displeasing" but they are just nine squares of AREA so they didn't exactly concern me. Then I descended into the meat of the puzzle via TOP BANANAS and finally, whoosh—or swish, I guess, maybe—that center answer broke the grid (and the theme) wide open:

OK, so STORY was wrong, that's not really important. The important thing was I remembered "oh, right, it's Tourney Week," so I knew where this was going. Or I thought I did. At this point, I wasn't paying those circled squares much mind. I could see that the upper longer answer was probably gonna be BRACKET, something, probably BRACKETOLOGY (a word I know well, from decades of paying attention to this tourney earlier in my life, when I followed sports more closely). But weirdly I never looked at the BRACKETOLOGY clue. I wasn't solving Downs-only, but sometimes, especially if I'm not speed-solving, my habits of only looking at Downs *and* only looking at short stuff first really take over. I think I just wanted to see if I was right about BRACKETOLOGY without actually looking at the clue directly. So I managed to get the FINAL from 4D: ___ 4 but still wasn't really thinking about why it might be circled. Then I hit ELITE, noticed what was up, and went over and wrote in SWEET in the 16 slot. This was absolutely the peak moment of the solve. Got a legitimate "oh ... nice" out of me. That's an architectural feat that has some oomph and purpose to it. Built the whole damn grid so that the 4, 8, and 16 answers would come out five letters long, so that each one could fit the clue on two levels (a basketball and a grid level), and then put those answers in circles, which look like basketballs but more importantly are "round" (like the "rounds" of the tourney they represent). Yes, at this SWEET point, I was impressed.

But like an arcing three-pointer at the buzzer, or any other ball thrown into the air, this one came down. I think the shot was good (if we want to continue this metaphor), but it clanked around a bit before going in. OLD DAYS definitely took some energy out of the puzzle. Doesn't stand alone terrible well. Also, heralded a major influx of OLD DAYS-speak, like GASSER and IN A PIG'S EYE. Between those answers and TOP BANANAS, the puzzle felt like it was doing a bit, some kind of olde-timey thing that didn't seem to fit with the very very timely puzzle theme (the Men's Tournament starts today). But despite that odd clump of dated slang, the fill overall seemed reasonably smooth and largely unremarkable. "AWGOON" looks funny in the grid, but I like it a lot as an abashed (or mock-abashed) expression of humility, even if the clue Once Again goes the corny mid-century route with the slang (10D: "Oh, yer joshin' me") ("AW, GO ON!"). 

As for difficulty, there wasn't much (unless you know nothing about the tourney, then there was maybe a lot). All the difficulty for me came with names, which is absolutely par for the course with Peter puzzles. No constructor is more obsessed with celebrity names than Peter, and while this means you learn a lot when you solve his puzzles, it also means (for me) a greater-than-average number of "who, what!?" moments. Mostly he manages to keep these "who, what!?" moments from crossing :) Anyway, I have definitely seen IGA, NIA and ALEX's names before, but alas I remembered none of them today. But the crosses were fair so no harm no ... foul! Did it! Stuck the landing with a basketball reference! Nothing but net! Ah. Feels good. OK, gonna go bask in the glory of that one. Have a nice (snow) day. Stay off the roads, Northeasterners!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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