Peabody-winning journalist Steve / FRI 5-8-26 / Ding thing? / Tuber that's the source of tapioca / Mammoth's home, for short / It's usually followed by an "s" / Humor without a traditional punchline / Cartoonist who popularized the Democratic donkey / Where to see fresh coats of white? / One of two in Raphael's "Sistine Madonna"

Constructor: Rafael Musa and Geoffrey Schorkopf

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Steve KROFT (51A: Peabody-winning journalist Steve) —

 

Stephen F. Kroft (born August 22, 1945) is an American retired journalist who was a long-time correspondent for 60 Minutes. His investigative reporting garnered widespread acclaim, winning him three Peabody Awards and nine Emmy awards, including one for Lifetime Achievement in 2003. [...] In 1990, he became the first American journalist to be given extensive access to the contaminated grounds of the Chernobyl nuclear facility, and his story won an Emmy.^[8] After allegations of infidelity surfaced in the 1992 presidential election, then-Governor Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary, gave an exclusive interview to Kroft. The interview was one of the defining moments in the election. [...] Kroft asked Clint Eastwood how many children he has while interviewing the highly secretive actor in 1997. When Eastwood responded "I have a few," Kroft broached the subject with a declarative question: "Seven kids with five women, right?"—actually a conservative estimate, but at the time an unprecedented statement. Eastwood did not answer and stared at Kroft in silence for 30 seconds. [lol] (wikipedia)

• • •

This was fun, but way harder than I'm used to Friday puzzles being of late. No whoosh or zoom for me today, as three out of the four quadrants involved some amount of struggle today. Of the longer answers, SEX MANUALS and "WHEN IN ROME..." went in pretty easily, but all the rest had me stopping and thinking. Only the NE corner, the last section I solved, ended up being relatively easy, and that's because I. had the bottom of those longer answers already built—the SKIP from SKIP STONES went up into that corner and everything worked out from there. But back to the beginning—yeesh and yikes, that little 3x4 section at the far NW was very, very hard for me to nail down. -A-ESON (1A: Criticizes, in modern lingo) + -TT- (1D: It's usually followed by an "s") + -S- (19A: Hollywood is on it: Abbr.) + -EX- (3D: Ding thing?) had me worried I was losing my mind. Eventually I got HTTP and HATES ON and it all fell, but every clue in there had me mystified for a bit. Elsewhere, the plural of MED SCHOOLS was hidden / invisible (28D: Where to see fresh coats of white?), so even though I wanted SCHOOLS, I pulled it. I had no idea who Steve KROFT was (turns out, I know who he is, but only by face, not by name). So the SW corner fought me a little as well. 

And then there was the SE corner, which was giving me nothing until I finally got to a gimme: KOFI (54D: ___ Annan, former U.N. secretary general). I was able to build back from there, through the gratuitous Taylor Swift reference, through RONDA (another answer, like MED SCHOOLS, that I had but then pulled), back to ... MANIOC!? (46D: Tuber that's the source of tapioca). LOL, "She's a MANIOC, MAAAAAANIOC!" I swear to god I wrote TAPIOC in there for a bit. I guess I've heard of MANIOC but hoo boy, not a front-of-the-brainer. I think I had CASAVA in there at some point too, and I was close: cassava is another name for MANIOC, but as you can see, "cassava" has two "s"s, not one. sigh. That "N" in MANIOC was elusive because I don't know what a Chilango is (someone from Chile, I'm guessing, now) [nope—a resident of Mexico City, lol, no hope of guessing that],  ... let's just say the missing tilde on that "N" is somehow extra grating today. SEÑOR. It's SEÑOR. Not SENOR. . . Pfft. OK, I think that's all the SORE SPOTS. Again, I think the grid is good today, I just was not prepared for this kind of a struggle on a normally breezy Friday.

Today's marquee answers are more than up to the job (that job: being sexy and/or flashy and/or generally interesting). ANTI-COMEDY was the only thing that landed with a thud for me, mostly because I don't really believe in it (11D: Humor without a traditional punchline). It's still comedy, right? I'm not sure which comedians are allegedly anti-comedians. The two main figures who get cited on the ANTI-COMEDY wikipedia page are Andy Kaufman and Norm Macdonald ... yeah, OK, that helps a little. Still, "subverting normal joke structure" is just a form of comedy. Subverting normal structures is a standard thing that happens within all arts. I just think ANTI-COMEDY is a stupid label. A real term, but a dumb one. But this is a personal opinion, not a genuine fault with the puzzle. And as I say, the other longer answers really sing. SKIP STONES, SINK HOLE, "WHEN IN ROME..." ... I love that SEX MANUALS and STARTER KIT are in symmetry. Makes me wonder what kind of STARTER KIT we're talking about. What kind of "gear" you got there, buddy? (30D: First gear?).

Bullets:

• 17A: One away from one's duties? (TAX EXILE) — at first I thought this was going to be something about going AWOL, but no, "duties" = taxes. Really thought throwing TAX into that far NW corner was going to bring it right down, but even with the "X," as I said above—rough going up there.
• 18A: French exit (SORTIE) — literally the French word for "exit." The clue is playing on this meaning of "french exit": "a departure from a location or event without informing others or without seeking approval"

• 48A: Mammoth's home, for short (NHL) — I forget which team this is. LOL there's a Utah Mammoth now? Yes, since 2024, there is. My sports IQ really fell through the floor when I gave up network/cable TV (and therefore ESPN).

• 3D: Ding thing? (TEXT) — as someone who has all sounds on his phone turned O-F-F (because they are a public nuisance), this clue really really missed me. SEXT seemed more likely, somehow (Does "Ding" have sexual implications? Maybe not. But somehow, with the winky little "?" at the end of the clue, it feels like it does...) 

• 10D: Accessory turned down on a cap (EARLAP) — never gonna get over how this is basically the same thing as EAR FLAP. Like, someone was just lazy and didn't want to say or write the "F" and so now we've got a stupid variant (not sure which spelling is the variant, actually). Literally, the meaning of EARLAP is EARFLAP. Come on. Can we not collectively agree to throw one of these terms in the sea?
• 39D: ___ Theatre, Atlanta art house named for a fictional estate (TARA) — the "estate" here is the one from Gone With the Wind. Feels like the clue is going out of its way not to mention Gone With the Wind, possibly because it sentimentalizes the "Old South," but the clue somehow has the opposite effect, highlighting the title by referring to it elliptically. Anyway, if you are unfamiliar with Gone With the Wind lore and don't live in Atlanta, I imagine this clue might've been baffling. TARA used to be clued almost exclusively as this estate, or as a place in Ireland. These days, it's much more likely to be someone's name—historically, skater TARA Lipinski has dominated (since her first appearance in 1998), but actress TARA Reid has gotten a lot of play (disproportionate to her actual fame, one might argue), and writer TARA Westover (Educated) also appears from time to time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Rx for a root canal / THU 4-16-26 / Portmanteau for a queer Fortnite player, say / Big payroll service co. / Source of a deal with The Devil? / Fields medalist Terence / Joel's smuggling partner on "The Last of Us" / Ventricle suppliers / Insect nicknamed for its small size / Negation word in French / Fish whose name is Spanish for "pretty"

Constructor: Rafael Musa and Sala Wanetick

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: DOWN / TO A T (63A: With 65-Across, with extreme precision ... or a hint to reading 15 of this puzzle's answers) — Fifteen Down answers end with a "T" that appears not as usual (i.e. in a box like all the other letters) but as a "T"-shaped black-letter formation

Theme answers:

• INDIC(T) (4D: Charge)
• "AM I NO(T)?" (5D: Question from someone seeking reassurance)
• EVEN(T) (12D: Occasion)
• TARO(T) (15D: Source of a deal with The Devil?)
• ATLAS(T) (6D: "Finally!")
• TEASE(T) (7D: Service with cups and saucers)
• DAYS PAS(T) (13D: Previous times)
• BRA(T) (27D: Kid who might get grounded)
• OPEN SEA(T) (14D: Welcome sight in musical chairs)
• DELIS(T) (30D: Take off the market)
  
• ABU(T) (38D: Be against, in a way)
• DIVER(T) (31D: Reroute)
• SCRIP(T) (32D: Something a reality show lacks)
• EGO(T) (40D: Achievement for Whoopi Goldberg and Rita Moreno, in brief)
• BASAL(T) (33D: Igneous rock that makes up most of Venus's surface)

Word of the Day: To a T (65A) —

Precisely; exactly; perfectly; with great attention to detail. // The origins of this phrase are uncertain, but it has been observed in print since at least 1693,^[1] and likely was around well before that. The possibly related phrase to a tittle is found in a 1607 play, The Woman Hater by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher ("I'll quote him to a tittle"). The T in the phrase to a T is likely the first letter of a word, with tittle being the most likely source.

Other theories with little evidence point to golf tees, for their small size; this may have at least influenced the alternative form to a tee. Some speculate a relationship with T-square, a measuring device introduced around the turn of the century. Others claim the expression refers to the correct completion of the letter t by crossing it.

In print from "Two Years Before the Mast" published in 1840, and, even then, using quotes, refers to the practice of squaring up a yardarm with a mast on a sailing ship such that it made a perpendicular T. (wikipedia)

• • •

Well, I finally got a Thursday with some fight in it. I really appreciated that. It wasn't just the theme that made things tough—very tough, early on—it was ... everything. I never really picked up momentum at any point, never flew through any part of this one. A grind from start to finish. It was mostly an enjoyable grind, so I didn't mind, but yeah, no whoosh today. There was one "aha"—the moment I figured out the gist of the theme. But once that happens ... it's just a one-note theme. There's nothing left to discover, except the revealer (unless you started there, which was possibly a good idea today—I did not do this). Speaking of the revealer ... why isn't it resonating with me? It's a phrase I know I've seen, and I can kinda hear someone saying it, but it's overlapping and getting interference with the phrase "done to a turn" (usu. used of food that's cooked perfectly). Is "to a turn" sometimes abbreviated "TO A T?" I know the phrase "down to a science." As for "TO A T," it mostly stands on its own and doesn't need "down." Seems like it's most often preceded by the verb "fits," as in many of these examples I just found (at Grammarist):

My gender has nothing to do with my frustration here: it’s 2011 and I am not Suzy Homemaker from 1952 who follows rigid gender roles to a T. [The Frisky]

It fits to a T the reform pledge that former Mayor Ed Koch circulated during the campaign – signed by 138 of the state’s 212 legislators. [New York Daily News]

[H]e seems like the kind of guy who would value life experience more than possessions, and at times that philosophy fits him to a T.  [Superbike Planet]

After finding out its definition, she decided the word fit her sixth-grade girls team to a T. [The Salem News]

So I acknowledge that DOWN / TO A T is a valid phrase, but it didn't exactly land, to my ears. But it does work in a very literal way for today's concept. I want to call attention to the fact that none of the "T"-ending words look like gibberish in the grid; without the "T," every one of them looks like a real (if unclued) word. That is the kind of elegance of execution a theme like this needs. Maybe some people won't notice, but it's a nice touch.

The puzzle does have a truly ugly SW corner, though. Also, a tough corner (esp. if you don't watch The Last of Us, which I do not). That clue on LEISURE made getting into that corner at all a real challenge. I had SCRIBES and still, even with the first letters of all the downs down there, I was stuck. I had to go down and get SSN and then claw my way back out. Inferring DOWN got me the "W" for RIPSAW, and I was on my way, but yeesh. ADP? American Dollar Processors? Andy's Downtown Payroll? (it's American Data Processing) (51A: Big payroll service co.). Never ever ever a fan of random three-letter initialisms of non-everyday things where the initials are a complete "???" I've seen ADP in puzzles before, but no way that thing is ever sticking. No one would put that answer in their grid if they weren't totally desperate. And CEDE TO ... oof, OK, I guess. As for The Last of Us, I know this is a popular show, but it's HBO popular, which means people who watch it tend to vastly overestimate exactly how many people are watching it. 

Season two's premiere of the post-apocalyptical TV series “The Last of Us” counted 5.3 million viewers across the linear HBO channel and streaming service HBO Max, an increase compared to the first episode of the first season. However, season two's final was watched by only 3.7 million people. The TV show is based on a video game franchise of the same name and was produced by Sony Pictures Television. (staista.com)

I know the show is based on a video game, so maybe this TESS is in the video game too? I dunno. I just know that 55A: Joel's smuggling partner on "The Last of Us" was just a random four-letter name to me, without even any indication of gender. That under ADP (ugh) crossing CEDE TO—ugly. The clue on LEISURE is actually good, though (49A: This isn't working!)—it just made that corner that much harder.

I made mistakes everywhere. TAU for TAO was particularly awful (2D: Fields medalist Terence). In that same NW corner, I had "AM I OK?" at 5D: Question from someone seeking reassurance—that may have been the deepest and most brutal hole I fell into, since that answer felt so right. Oh, and I drink gin ... not infrequently ... but I have never heard gin described as PINEY (18A: Like some gin and cleaning products). I'm not saying no one does this. I'm saying that if you struggled with that answer, I see you, I hear you, I understand, and I would like to validate your feelings about the not-obvious connection between gin and PINEY. Floral? Botanical? London Dry? Old Tom? Sloe? So many words and terms I associate with gin. Gin that takes like cleaning product? Not familiar. Don't know what I had in there at first, but it wasn't PINEY. 

Bullets:

• 14A: ___ Moshtegh, "My Year of Rest and Relaxation" novelist (OTTESSA) — still haven't read her, but I've seen her name (and her books) a bunch over the (recent) years. I knew her name was unusual, but I thought it was even more unusual than it ended up being. "Isn't there an 'H' in there somewhere?" I think I was thinking of her last name. Anyway, I knew this one but didn't know it know it. Kinda surprised to see OTTESSA and TESS in the same grid. They may be unrelated names, but they feel and look related.
  

• 1D: X, for one (APP) — now I'm remembering why getting started was such slow going. I got ATRIA fine, but "confirmed" it with TAU (wrong), and then couldn't "confirm" any of the other Downs. With three of those Downs, the reason was obvious (I didn't know what was going on with the theme). But with APP, ugh. &^#$%! why is the deranged billionaire white supremacist guy's right-wing disinformation pig sty of an APP in here? So many APPs in the world! So! Many! I know, I know, X gives you the opportunity to misdirect people. Congrats, it worked ... 
• 16A: Performer known for her runs (POP DIVA) — vocal runs

• 11A: Rx for a root canal (PAIN MED) — oof, yet another reason that NW was tough. Nothing particularly "root canal"-y about a PAIN MED (which looks a little odd to me in the singular, but I'll allow it).
• 43D: Tool with coarse teeth (RIPSAW) — had the "R" and wrote in RASPER for some reason (!?!?!)
• 15D: Source of a deal with The Devil? (TARO(T)) — even knowing the "T" gimmick, I struggled with this one. The Devil is a card in a standard TAROT deck.

• 27D: Kid who might get grounded (BRA(T)) — the answer where I (finally) figured out the "T" thing. First thought there was some kind of wordplay going on, like maybe the "Kid" was a goat, or else "grounded" was going to have some airplane-type meaning, I don't know. But the crosses all filled in pretty easily and then I was like "BRA? But that's missing a letter. Where's the ... ohhhhh, there it is." I then went back up and took care of that formerly impossible NW corner:

That's all for today. See you next time. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Letterboxd]
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Political commentator Piker / FRI 3-20-26 / Kachina-carving people / Dramatic outerwear for the theater / Participant in the Jacobite rebellion of the 1740s / Athlete nickname "O Rei" / Some scenery in "The Road Runner Show" / Viral 2010s dance that Hillary Clinton performed on TV / It has more than 4,000 islands off its coast

Constructor: Rafael Musa and Rebecca Goldstein

Relative difficulty: Very easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: HASAN Piker (5A: Political commentator Piker) —

Hasan Doğan Piker (born July 25, 1991), known online by the name HasanAbi, is an American Twitch streamer, influencer, and left-wing political commentator. His content primarily consists of political and social commentary and media consumption. As of 2026, Piker's Twitch channel ranks among the platform's most-subscribed. Piker has been described as one of the biggest voices on the U.S. left. Piker started streaming on Twitch in March 2018, while working at The Young Turks (TYT). [...] 

His uncle, Cenk Uygur, is a political commentator and co-founder of The Young Turks, a left-leaning news network.

In January 2020, he left TYT to focus on his career as a Twitch streamer. Piker has regularly spoken about the Gaza war by advocating for Palestinians and criticizing the Israeli government. [...] 

Piker has been most commonly identified as a leftist, socialist, and Marxist. He has advocated in favor of workplace democracy, universal health care, LGBTQ+ rights, anti-Zionism, and gun control. Andrew Marantz of The New Yorker described Piker as anti-Trump but "hardly a loyal Democrat". Instead, Marantz classified Piker as an "old-school leftist," critical of the "American empire". In an interview with GQ magazine, Piker stated that his goal was to push the Democratic Party to be more progressive. Intelligencer called Piker "the AOC of Twitch".

 (wikipedia)

• • •

This puzzle has some lovely long answers, particularly the crossing grid-spanners (SURPRISE PARTIES, "JUST SO WE'RE CLEAR...") and the plea "GO EASY ON ME." But that plea felt deeply ironic, as this puzzle went easy on me from the first clue and never stopped going easy on me, and so with no real challenge and no other really sparkly answers, I ended up feeling a little disappointed. The grid is perfectly solid and smooth, it just came in a tad dull from me. Several of the longer answers, while completely unobjectionable, felt disappointingly listless. E-SCOOTERS feels like 9-letter crosswordese to me by now. I see AMINO in the grid So Much that AMINO ACIDS was not a particularly welcome sight. Hard to think of a longer answer plainer and ho-hummier than HOME SALES. All the other longer answers hold up, but the great stuff is basically offset by the duller stuff, and so I was left feeling just so-so about the whole thing. It's possible that I'm being unfair, that I expect so much from these constructors (two of my favorites) that anything short of stellar ends up seeming mildly disappointing. At any rate, I definitely enjoyed parts of this, and I think it's well made. I just wanted more sizzle. And a lot more challenge.

There is easy and there is Easy, and then apparently there is also Easy, a new, italicized level of "easy" I had to invent just for this puzzle. Do you know how fast I got to here?:

Ten seconds, tops. As fast as I could type: ASAP went in (1A: Rush order), and then I went backward from "P" to "A" doing all the crosses, 1-2-3-4, no hesitation. That is a Monday-level corner, no exaggeration. Coming across those longer answers was a *little* bit harder, but only because I couldn't think of a word to follow GAME besides PRESERVE (or RESERVE). It's "wildlife refuge," "game (p)reserve," at least in my brain, so I had to work crosses there, but that didn't take long. 

The one part of the puzzle I did have some trouble with was immediately adjacent to the GAME REFUGE—despite his being "one of the biggest voices on the U.S. Left" (wikipedia), I—an extremely tiny voice on the U.S. left—have never heard of HASAN Piker (5A: Political commentator Piker). This may have something to do with the fact that I try as hard as possible to listen to zero political commentators—go out of my way not to hear any of them—and also something to do with the fact that except for the few times I've live-streamed cryptic-crossword solves with my friends Rachel and Neville, I have spent almost zero time on Twitch (which is apparently where HASAN Piker reigns). This is because I am old, and I have no interest in gaming (which is mostly what gets streamed on Twitch). I cannot imagine watching political commentary on Twitch or YouTube. But then, as I've said, I can't really imagine watching it At All at this point. The rise of the "political commentator" has been concomitant with the death of journalism and the rise of fascism and I don't think these phenomena are unrelated. So I will read political commentary, sometimes, but all the camera-facing, look-at-me, for-the-Likes performance ... it's not for me. I would prefer not. The pivot-to-video moment in our culture has not had any discernible positive impact that I'm aware of. What we get is fragmentation and polarization. And profit, presumably, for some few people. It would be great if all the video "engagement" resulted in a better world. I mean this world, actual world [reaches out and touches desk and lamp and other objects in three-dimensional space]. So far ... Well, you tell me how it's going. Sorry, where was I? Oh, right, didn't know HASAN, and the "N" cross was wild. Wildly vague, anyway: 9D: Basic ___. I had the "EE" and thought FEES and even TEES before the "D" from DINERO made "NEED" clear. After the HASAN/NEED moment—whoosh, puzzle went up in flames so fast that I barely remember the experience.

[SCOT]

Bullets:

• 44A: Danish money (KRONE) — managed to avoid all the "which spelling is it?!" drama by getting that terminal "E" first (from 41D: "Get it?").
• 47A: Word repeated in "With a ___ ___ here and a ___ ___ there ..." (MOO) — this is maybe the greatest clue in the history of crosswords. Certainly the greatest fill-in-the-blank clue. Maximalist bovine lunacy. Love it.
• 12D: Dramatic outerwear for the theater (OPERA COAT) — cannot believe I got tangled up in competing operawear terms, but isn't OPERA CAPE a thing? I feel sure that it is. When I think olde-tymey operagoing, I think top hats, lorgnettes, and capes! Coats? You can wear a coat any old time. But a cape!? Well, unless you are COSPLAYing a superhero (36D: Be a hero, say), there are very few options. Looks like OPERA COAT outgoogles OPERA CAPE by about 5-to-1, so I reluctantly withdraw my objection, which was never really an objection in the first place, just an enthusiasm for capes. 
• 42D: Viral 2010s dance that Hillary Clinton performed on TV (NAE NAE) — first of all, dated crosswordese, boo. Second of all, I would've been perfectly content if this clue had stopped at "dance." More than content. Happy. In retrospect, thrilled. You wanna know what piece of video I won't be looking up today? ... Sigh, now I feel like I have to look it up, as a public disservice. Let's see ... hang on ... alright, I got it, and ... oh, OK, I saw three seconds of it, and I wish I'd stuck to my initial instincts. (I wonder why the clue didn't say she performed it on Ellen — "on TV" is weak—unless she performed it on multiple shows, in which case, no wonder she lost (I kid! I voted for her, relax...))

• 47D: It has more than 4,000 islands off its coast (MAINE) — damn that is a lot of islands. Who counted? Give that person a raise. Unless a computer counted. Please do not give the computer a raise.

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Derisive term for unattractive public sculptures / FRI 2-6-26 / Classic mixed drink developed in Singapore / "Hearts are ___ for the breakin'" (Taylor Swift lyric) / Dwelling that epitomizes simple living / Phenomenon through which luxuries become necessities / Home improvement site, after a 2021 rebranding / Simone Biles or Tom Brady, acronymically / Stage name of South Korean rapper Park Jae-sang / Finishes a season, say

Constructor: Geoffrey Schorkopf and Rafael Musa

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: TINY HOME (35D: Dwelling that epitomizes simple living) —

The tiny-house movement (also known as the small house movement) is an architectural and social movement promoting the reduction and simplification of living spaces. Tiny homes have been promoted as offering lower-cost and sometimes eco-friendly features within the housing market, and they have also been promoted a housing option for homeless individuals.However, the lack of clearly defined features and legality in many cases can cause issues for ownership, including being more expensive for the amount of area, vulnerability to natural disaster, lack of storage, difficulty hosting, smaller or lacking traditional home appliances, and legal and or zoning issues.

There is some variation in defining a tiny home, but there are examples and they are usually based on floorspace. However, tiny homes do not have clearly defined features and may be mobile and may or may not have traditional home features. One definition, according to the International Residential Code, a tiny house's floorspace is no larger than 400 square feet (37 m²). In common language a tiny house and related movement can be larger than 400 ft² and Merriam-Webster says they can be up to 500 ft² . One architectural firm used a threshold of 600 ft² to define a tiny home. (wikipedia)

• • •

There's lots to like in this, but there is a largeish rectangular patch in the NW that ended up being both ugly and alien to me. And hard. Harder than the rest, anyway. The rectangle is bordered on the south by HARD HAT (32A: Mason, e.g.) and on the east by GIN SLING (8D: Classic mixed drink developed in Singapore). Actually, it's half that rectangle. It's more of a triangle, with the three points being the "H" in HARD HAT and the "G"s at the front and back of GIN SLING. Everything inside that triangle (roughly) was a (tiny) nightmare for me. The epicenter of the nightmare was the completely off-putting (and completely unknown to me) PLOP ART (7D: Derisive term for unattractive public sculptures). It's like a bird shit all over the puzzle. At least, I'm assuming that's what the "plop" part of PLOP ART refers to, right? Bird shit? Don't birds shit on all public art, not just the sculptures you think are "unattractive?" I get that it's playing on the term "pop art," but the shittiness of "plop" is ICK on every level. [wikipedia says that the "plop" part refers to sculpture that seems to have been "plopped" thoughtlessly where it lies, but wikipedia also says the term PLOP ART "holds connotations to excrement"]. I was left wondering what horrid, rotting wordlist that answer crawled out from under. 

That second "P" in PLOP ART took forever, because ...  well, primarily because of WRAPS (20A: Finishes a season). I had no idea what sense of "finishes" (or "season") the clue wanted, and was getting no help from 1, 2, 3 of the crosses. PLOP ART, obvs, no help. Then there's the "Taylor Swift lyric." God knows I have been more than accommodating to the general enSwiftification of the puzzle over the past decade or so, but you're not even giving me the song titles now? Just ... "Taylor Swift lyric?" Are hearts HERE for the breakin'? HELD for the breakin'? I don't know. In retrospect, HERS seems obvious, but while solving, no, that was not the case. The last answer keeping WRAPS from going in was GPS WATCH. I had the GPS, but ... I didn't even know GPS WATCH was a thing, so I was stuck. I also don't really get what "word play" is supposed to be happening in the clue (5D: What gives you the time and place?). Is that just a straightforward question? I've heard people say "name the time and place" or something like that, but the phrasing here evokes nothing very clear. So, yeah, now that I've written this out, the real killer for me in the NW was WRAPS—an answer I'm not actually mad at at all. But its vagueness made GPS WATCH, HERS, and PLOP ART (none of them appealing to me) tough for me to come up with.

GIN SLING was easy but clanked a bit in my ears. I know the SINGAPORE SLING. In fact, that's the only way I got SLING—by inferring it from the "Singapore" in the clue. SINGAPORE SLING would be a great answer. GIN SLING ... fine, but less great. As for HARD HAT, somehow in my head a "Mason" is either really old-timey (laying bricks and mortar with a trowel in, like, Dickensian times) or else belongs to a secret society. I don't picture him (or her, but in my mind's eye, def him) with a HARD HAT at all, and then there's the fact that I haven't heard a person referred to as a HARD HAT in I don't know how long. But yeah, def. 1b. at merriam-webster dot com = "construction worker." Anyway, getting from the clue to the answer there, rough for me. Once I exit that HARD HAT / GIN SLING Bermuda Triangle, though, things get a lot cleaner and more entertaining. IT'S A SMALL WORLD is solid, as is the bank of 8s it runs into (CONTRACT / TOTAL LIE  / STOP DEAD) (those last two aren't just solid, they're strong). I love the highs and lows of modern living represented by the crossing answers TINY HOME (35D: Dwelling that epitomizes simple living) and LIFESTYLE CREEP (49A: Phenomenon through which luxuries become necessities). Real yin/yang action there. "I don't need much" vs. "I need I need I need." Good stuff. BOSS BATTLE is boring and by now old (used four times already in the 2020s, including once just six weeks ago, by one of these same constructors (?!)), but "I'M SO SCARED" made me laugh (it could use and "ooh" on the front in order to be fully sarcastic, but I still like it). The SW corner is as solid as its NE counterpart. A real joy to move through about 3/4 of this puzzle. It's only the stuff ... emanating ... from PLOP ART that made me at all unhappy. 

Bullets:

• 59A: Home improvement site, after a 2021 rebranding (ANGI) — seen this before and am never gonna like it. Feels like the puzzle's doing PR work on this "rebranding." The site used to be "Angie's List." Now it's this awful adspeak / app-ified four-letter nightmare that evokes angina and angioplasty more than home improvement, imho. It's neo-crosswordese to me and I hate it.
• 56A: Simone Biles or Tom Brady, acronymically (G.O.A.T.) — Greatest Of All Time. I think it's weird to just state it as fact that the acronym applies. A "to some," is probably in order. This is esp. true with Tom Brady (I think Biles is pretty objectively the greatest to ever do it).

• 21D: Parliament constituent (OWL) — the collective term for OWLs is a "parliament." Because I studied Middle English literature in grad school, I knew Chaucer's poem Parlement of Foules (i.e. "Parliament of Fowls") before I ever knew the term "parliament" applied specifically to OWLs. Fun (and semi-timely) fact: Parlement of Foules is the likely origin of the association of St. Valentine's Day (Feb. 14) with lovers. 

The Parlement of Foules (modernized: Parliament of Fowls), also called the Parlement of Briddes (Parliament of Birds) or the Assemble of Foules (Assembly of Fowls), is a poem by Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1340s–1400) made up of approximately 700 lines. The poem, which is in the form of a dream vision in rhyme royal stanza, contains one of the earliest references to the idea that St. Valentine's Day is a special day for lovers.

Oruch's survey of the literature finds no association between Valentine and romance prior to Chaucer. He concludes that Chaucer is likely to be "the original mythmaker in this instance." (wikipedia) 

• 23D: Entered a bear market (SLID) — first thought: "Ew, why are you going to a bear market, why are they selling bears, what do you need a bear for, bears should be free!" Then I thought of the stock market. And wrote in SOLD.
• 44D: Stage name of South Korean rapper Park Jae-sang (PSY) — as far as I know, PSY is known in this country for precisely one song ("Gangnam Style"), which was indeed mmmmmaaaaaasssssssiiiiiiivvvvve ... in 2012. Since 2012, I have thought about PSY and that song only when crosswords have forced me to.

• 51D: Modern name of the first National League champions (1876) (CUBS) — in 1876 they were the White Stockings. When they became the CUBS (around the turn of the (20th) century), the name "White Stockings" was adopted by the new American League team on the South Side of Chicago—this team became the modern Chicago White Sox.

[37D: Bring three suitcases to a weekend trip, say]

That's all for today. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. my bird-of-the-day calendar has entered the crossword chat

[OWLs … and they’re URAL (4)!]

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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