Chinese instrument with two strings / SUN 7-5-26 / Folk religion akin to voodoo / Satirist Freberg / What has flatter feet? / Bygone N.Y.C. music venue with rhyming initials / Lingerie brand with a Slavic-sounding name / Longtime Tribeca restaurant where some say the Cosmopolitan was invented, with "the" / Product displays seen at entrances to store aisles / Jewish mysticism, in one spelling

Constructor: Rich Katz

Relative difficulty: Very, very easy

THEME: "Boxed Sets" — familiar phrases are clued via "sets" of terms (listed inside the curly brackets that indicate mathematical sets) —the sequential arrangement of the terms in the sets indicates the phrases:

Theme answers:

• BABE IN THE WOODS (22A: {Elijah, Ruth, Natalie}) [BABE Ruth in [between] two WOODS]
• BEATS AROUND THE BUSH (28A: {Kerouac, Dubya, Ginsberg}) ["Beats" = Beat Generation writers]
• POWER BEHIND THE THRONE (41A: {WC, AC, DC}) [WC = water closet = toilet = "THRONE"]
• HONOR AMONG THIEVES (66A: {Bonnie, Oscar,  Clyde}) ["Oscar" here is the Academy Award]
• TWO BIRDS WITH ONE STONE (88A: {Larry, Sue, Emma}) [Larry Bird, Sue Bird, Emma Stone]
• ROLL WITH THE PUNCHES (97A: {Cinnabon, Kool-Aid, Hi-C})
• DOWN IN THE DUMPS (113A: {Landfill, goose feathers, junkyard})

Word of the Day: The ODEON (120A: Longtime Tribeca restaurant where some say the Cosmopolitan was invented, with "the") —

The Odeon is a restaurant in New York City. The restaurant opened in 1980, in space previously occupied by Towers Cafeteria. The restaurant was founded by Lynn Wagenknecht, Keith McNally, and Brian McNally. Wagenknecht continues to run the restaurant. Wagenknecht has characterized the restaurant as a brasserie. [...] The Odeon has been referred to as a "classic" New York City restaurant. In his 1989 review, Bryan Miller commented that the restaurant was already "called an institution" despite having been open for less than ten years. William Grimes referred to The Odeon as "ageless and definitively downtown" in a 2000 review of Village, a restaurant opened by former Odeon chef Stephen Lyle. Stephen Heyman, writing for Surface, described The Odeon and other restaurants operated by Keith McNally as gradually transitioning from a "forward operating bases of gentrification" to "important parts of the city's heritage". The restaurant has been credited with inspiring imitators hoping to mimic its ambience and success. // Scenes in Jay McInerney's novel Bright Lights, Big City take place at The Odeon, and the exterior was depicted on the book's first edition cover. McInerney has said that attorneys at his publishing house were concerned about depictions of drug use at the restaurant in the novel, so McInerney sought Keith McNally's permission to portray the restaurant in and on the book. McNally granted permission assuming the novel would not sell well. The exterior was also featured in the opening credits of Saturday Night Live. A celebration commemorating the 20th anniversary of the novel's publication was held at the restaurant. // The Odeon is known for its celebrity clientele. Regulars at the restaurant have at points included Jean-Michel Basquiat, John Belushi, and Andy Warhol. Lena Dunham has a tattoo of the restaurant's sign. In addition to its popularity with celebrities, the restaurant was at one point popular among Wall Street quants. (wikipedia)

• • •

[19D: Bygone N.Y.C. music venue with rhyming initials]

There's something slightly cute about the basic idea here, but it's all so easy that it feels ... slight. Also, the fill, yeesh. At times, yikes. Real back-from-the-crosswordese-grave stuff like OBEAH (42D: Folk religion akin to voodoo) and BRAE (56D: Scottish hill); a single E-SPORT (13A: Gamer's pursuit); the completely made-up phrase SAID SHH; the almost-as-completely-made-up phrase US TIME. Maybe I should be grateful for those moments of wincing, because otherwise, I don't think anything outside of theme would be memorable at all, so fast did it all go by. Where is the resistance today? It's not in the theme, which is pretty dang easy to suss out. There was the odd thing I didn't know (ODEON ... actually, is that it? ODEON? I think I knew literally everything else in this grid, which is Insane on a Sunday. The puzzle feels barely here, is what I'm saying. Wispy. And the theme, for all its charms, doesn't really match the title. There's no "box" involved in any of these besides maybe the first one, where the WOODSes "box" in (i.e. flank) The BABE. I guess DOWN IN THE DUMPS follows the same principle. But really, this is just about sets, not "boxes." I thought the cluing was pretty clever at times, esp. the {WC, AC, DC} one—I'm not a huge fan of toilet humor, but the cluing on that one is so tight—all elements of the set are two letters ending in "C." Very nice. I've got no real beef with the theme. It's not mind-blowing, but it'll do. The rest of it ... if I didn't have a marked-up print-out in front of me, I don't think I could tell you anything about it—that's how memorable it was.

If I could chuck one part of this puzzle into the sea and then shoot it into the moon and then detonate it, it would be that NE corner. Everything from ERHU EBSEN ESPNU all the way through to the improbably singular E-SPORT. Not sure why that answer hits my ear so wrong in the singular, but it does. But the real dealbreaker up there is SAIDSHH. I have "OOF" written in the margins next to that answer. The term is SHUSHED. If you can have SAIDSHH in your puzzle, then you can have SAIDanything in your puzzle. Total garbage. There are other parts of the puzzle that are less than lovely (HAREMS BRAE APRS LAB RATS, for instance), but nothing can compete, uglinesswise, with that NE corner. I liked that the puzzle was cocktail curious. Or, in the case of Angel's SHARE, cocktail adjacent (1D: Angel's ___ (distiller's term for the whiskey that evaporates during aging)). I heard a whole podcast episode once with the inventor of the Cosmopolitan, but I forgot his name, and I most definitely forgot the name of the bar where he worked. I was happy to (re-)learn these facts, as well as learn various things about the ODEON in general (see Word of the Day, above), including the fact that it is depicted on the cover of the Vintage Contemporaries edition of Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City, a book I definitely owned at one point in my life: those Vintage Contemporaries were a real feat of design, the first imprint (besides maybe Penguin) that I remember being able to recognize at sight. 

Bullets:

• 21A: Kind of costume that includes a round hat and kerchief (SAILOR) — such a weird clue for SAILOR. I was like "'kerchief,' wtf?" but yeah, I guess ... conventionally, you've got the kerchief around the neck:

• 25A: "___ it and rip it!" (aggressive golfer's mantra) ("GRIP") — ugh, golf lingo. There are different "mantras" based on how "aggressive" you are? 
• 27A: Product displays seen at entrances to store aisles (END CAPS) — not sure why this term came to me so easily. Seems pretty ... technical. I did do inventory work (with a ten-key on my hip!) one summer in college, so maybe store display terminology soaked in somehow.
• 75A: 30-ounce Starbucks size (TRENTA) — these feel mythical. Never seen this size on an actual Starbucks menu. Then again, I go into Starbucks as seldom as possible. It's usually an airport-type situation.
• 16D: Lingerie brand with a Slavic-sounding name (OLGA) — almost went with OLAF, which is more Scandinavian than Slavic.

• 32D: What has flatter feet? (ODE) — the best clue of the day. Kind of a thinker ... in that I had to think about it for a bit before I understood it. An ODE is a poem of praise, i.e. a poem intended to "flatter," and poetry is (frequently) composed of metrical units called "feet" (like iambs, for instance). So ... ODEs have "feet" that "flatter" ... or "flatter feet." It's ... a little awkward, but I admire the ambition. 
• 75D: They might be up in arms (TATS) — LOL wish this clue had appeared yesterday (in case you missed it, yesterday I revealed that while on vacation, I got my first tattoo—and (up) on my (left) arm, no less:

• 87D: Satirist Freberg (STAN) — I know who this is. Unfortunately, I thought his name was SAUL. Also, now that I think of it, I have him confused with the cartoonist Saul Steinberg. So ... yeah, I have no idea who STAN Freberg is. Let's see ... OK, here we go. Happy 5th of July!

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

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Gets a pooch to attack / TUE 6-2-26 / Word after video or Scotch / Fusion weapon, familiarly / Hindi term meaning master or mister / Original name of a popular shared-ride service / Chris with the 1991 hit "Wicked Game" / Wash with a glycol spray, as an airplane / Silver weapon brandished by one hoping for gold / Sea sight in black and white / Rock that's fracked to release oil

Constructor: Rich Katz

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "2, 4, 6, 8..." — first words of four themers are all homophones of the numbers in the chant familiar from the end of youth sports matches: "2, 4, 6, 8 ["TOO, FOR, SICS, ATE"], WHO DO WE / APPRECIATE! [The other team], [The other team], hurray!" (56A: With 63-Across, question hinted at by the beginnings of 17-, 21-, 25- and 48-Across)

Theme answers:

• TOO LATE NOW (17A: "You missed your chance!")
• FOR REAL (21A: "It's legit!")
• SICS THE DOG ON (25A: Gets a pooch to attack)
• ATE LIKE A BIRD (48A: Picked at one's food, in an avian metaphor)

Word of the Day: Chris ISAAK (53D: Chris with the 1991 hit "Wicked Game") —

Christopher Joseph Isaak (born June 26, 1956) is an American singer, songwriter, guitarist and occasional actor. Noted for his reverb-laden rockabilly revivalist style and wide vocal range, he is widely known for his breakthrough hit and signature song "Wicked Game" as well as international hits "Blue Hotel", "Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing", and "Somebody's Crying".

With a career spanning four decades, Isaak has released 13 studio albums, toured extensively with his band Silvertone, and received numerous award nominations. His sound and image are often compared to those of Roy Orbison, Elvis Presley, Ricky Nelson, and Duane Eddy.

Isaak has associated with film director David Lynch, who has used his music in numerous films. As an actor, he played supporting roles and bit parts in films such as Married to the Mob, The Silence of the Lambs, Little Buddha, That Thing You Do! and Lynch's Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, and starred in two television series: the sitcom The Chris Isaak Show and the talk show The Chris Isaak Hour. (wikipedia)

• • •

It should be WHOM.*

Do teams still do "2, 4, 6, 8"!? Are people from other countries familiar with this chant? I haven't thought about it since grade school—very familiar, but not something I've heard in a long time. I don't know of any context for it besides youth sports. I'm not sure it makes for much a crossword theme. It's vaguely interesting that there are ordinary-word homophones for each of the first four even numbers (not true for the odds, except 1), but the operative word here is "ordinary," and these phrases are either not very interesting (FOR REAL) or exceedingly contrived. Thematically, this one lost me completely at SICS THE DOG ON, both because the phrase is long and clunky and doesn't sound great as a standalone answer, and because it's so grim. No using dogs for violence. Gross. And that clue ... [Gets a pooch to attack]!? You don't get to use a term of endearment ("pooch") if this is how you use your dog. You've lost the privilege! No "doggo" or "buddy" or "pupper" either. SICS is a desperate homophone. I guess it's the only word you can use if you want to pull off this theme, but ... maybe that's a sign. An OMEN. That the theme isn't worth it. SICS THE DOG ON also crosses a mess of the worst fill, stuff like REWOVE (?) and UBER POOL (ugh, how many various UBER product names can the puzzle possibly shill for? It's like it finds a new one every month) (10D: Original name of a popular shared-ride service), and then a mess or crosswordese like NYET HBOMB and ANAIS. An SAHIB is right there as well—all stuff that people used to cram into puzzles seemingly every day when I was starting out, but which as (thankfully!) faded from view somewhat in the intervening decades. EMEND EKED ISAAK OWLETS EPEE EPPS ... the overfamiliar stuff keeps coming. And it's all point-and-shoot easy. No real trickery or cleverness anywhere, beyond the theme. A tidal wave of 3-4-5s. No real high points. Felt like a filler puzzle from days of yore.

The clues are kind of trying to liven things up. There are four "?" clues, but three of them aren't much trouble at all (the clues on UMP, NYET, OWLETS). Only the fourth made me go "huh?" ... and not in a good way. I truly do not understand how my HEEL helps me get my leg up. Your hip flexors and quads are largely responsible for lifting your leg. Is the idea that you're pushing off with your HEEL to ... what, climb stairs? That's not how people climb stairs? I'm at a loss. Maybe you're doing squats and driving through your HEEL? I do not understand what the clue means by "up" here. "Get a leg up" is a familiar idiomatic phrase, yes, but the "?" here indicates that there's a play on words here, presumably that the idiom is meant to be taken literally, but as I say, I'm at a loss as to how this works (someone in the comments suggested that HEEL refers to part of a shoe—huh, OK). One other question, which may be more of a comment: why is "avian" necessary in the ATE LIKE A BIRD clue? (48A: Picked at one's food, in an avian metaphor). I see how it makes the clue a lot easier, but it's totally unnecessary. The metaphor is well known; you don't have to shout "the one with the bird in it!" Trust solvers to figure out simple things like this. It's insulting otherwise.

Bullets:

• 42A: Part of a shoe or many a bra (LACE) — Me: "STRAP! It's STRAP! ... why won't STRAP fit!? It's obviously STRAP. STRAP, I say!" This is the one clue that seems to at least be trying for trickiness, in that the "LACE" is different in these two contexts (i.e. a shoe LACE is a very different thing from the LACE on a bra). I don't understand why it's "a shoe" but "many a bra." True, not all bras have LACE, but then not all shoes have LACEs either, so ... ??? "Many a" should apply to both or neither.
• 52A: Wash with a glycol spray, as an airplane (DEICE) — unlike with "avian" in the ATE LIKE A BIRD clue, I appreciated the extra help here ("as an airplane"), as I could not have told you what "glycol spray" was. 
• 49D: Emirate that was the site of Operation Desert Storm (KUWAIT) — like siccing dogs on people, Operation Desert Storm is something I'm fine never seeing mentioned again in my crossword. You've already got H-BOMB in here (29D: Fusion weapon, familiarly), isn't that enough militarism?
• 53D: Chris with the 1991 hit "Wicked Game" (ISAAK) — he really had a moment in the early '90s. I have no idea how well known he is any more ... outside of crosswords, that is, where his name is occasionally very handy (double-A!) and not to be confused with ISAAC or IZAAK (as in IZAAK Walton, who is real, old-school crosswordese; I don't think I'd know him or the work he wrote (The Compleat Angler) without crosswords ... although he did write a bio of Donne, but I know that only because I teach Donne, which most people ... don't). Coincidentally, I encountered Chris ISAAK just yesterday, as we watched David Lynch's Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) just last night, and ISAAK has a pretty large role as an FBI detective early in that movie (alongside Kiefer Sutherland, who I forgot was even in the movie). 

• 28D: Bone in the lower leg (TIBIA) — lots of leg anatomy in the puzzle today. Your shin bone (TIBIA) is not connected to your HEEL bone, but it gets pretty close.

That's it. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*No, I'm not serious. Grammatically correct, but not serious.  

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Fly-catching bird with a name derived from Greek / SUN 9-28-25 / Sewer in American history / Furniture retailer owned by Williams-Sonoma / City SE of Phoenix / Sewer in American history / Remove surgically, as tissue / He was né Clay / law concept in computing technology / Letter-shaped train track piece / French cocktail made with crème de cassis / Info commonly shown on a board game box

Constructor: Rich Katz

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "Central Perk" — the characters on the TV show Friends, crossed with benefits one might receive as a condition of one's employment; or, put another way: "FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS" (101A: Relationship featuring casual intimacy ... or a hint to six pairs of intersecting answers in the this puzzle)

Theme answers:

• RACHEL / DAYCARE (10D: Mother of Joseph and Benjamin, in the Bible / 24A: Alternative to a nanny)
• PHOEBE / HEALTH (3D: Fly-catching bird with a name derived from Greek / 39A: Class that might cause some high schoolers to blush)
• MONICA / DENTAL (17D: Santa ___ / 41A: Like some bridges)
• CHANDLER / BONUS (51D: City SE of Phoenix / 73A: Extra)
• JOEY / VACATION (86A: Outback baby / 47D: Time out, perhaps)
• ROSS / WELLNESS (90A: Sewer in American history / 56D: Holistic contentment)

Word of the Day: MOORE'S law (23A: ___ law, concept in computing technology) —

Moore's law is the observation that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit (IC) doubles about every two years. Moore's law is an observation and projection of a historical trend. Rather than a law of physics, it is an empirical relationship. It is an experience curve effect, a type of observation quantifying efficiency gains from learned experience in production.

The observation is named after Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel and former CEO of the latter, who in 1965 noted that the number of components per integrated circuit had been doubling every year,^[a] and projected this rate of growth would continue for at least another decade. In 1975, looking forward to the next decade, he revised the forecast to doubling every two years, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 41%. Moore's empirical evidence did not directly imply that the historical trend would continue; nevertheless, his prediction has held since 1975 and has since become known as a law. (wikipedia)

• • •

[PHOEBE]

It is currently the night of my wedding anniversary (i.e. Saturday night), so I have had a little to drink and a Lot to eat and am maybe not in the writingest headspace right now, but I'll do my best. Gonna keep it short. I think. This theme is silly and I kind of love it for that reason. I'm also slightly impressed by the title of the puzzle—which I rarely am on Sundays (the only day with an official title). I mean, it's very on the money. "Perk" is another word for "benefit," obviously, and Central Perk was the name of the coffee shop that functioned as the social hub of the Friends universe. There's a joke, many years into the show, where PHOEBE is talking to someone about "having picnics in Central Park" and "coffee at Central Perk," at which point she realizes that the coffee shop name is a pun: "Oh my god, I just got that." I'm pretty sure that was when *I* first got it too. I never really thought about the name. Anyway, I watched every episode of that show (a lot of it during its original run, and then all of it a few years back), and I literally just finished watching the second episode of the new season of The Morning Show, which is also set in NYC and also stars Jennifer Aniston. None of this is particularly relevant, just Friends-adjacent. I really wanted the crosses of the Friends and the benefits to be meaningful. That is, I wanted those letters to spell something out, but all I'm getting is CEANOS, which anagrams to OCEANS ... is that something? OCEAN is in the puzzle (64A: Where a hurricane forms). And there's a WALRUS in the OCEAN (or just under it). And the WALRUS was Paul, right? ... I don't see an EGGMAN, though. I'm gonna say the letters in the Friends/benefits crosses are meaningless. Sadly. Would've been supercool if those letters had been relevant in any way. But I still like the basic concept. 

If you're not a Friends fan, I don't know if you'll be as well disposed toward the theme as I am. There's other stuff to admire, for sure, though not a lot of long stuff—with 12 theme answers, half running Across and half Down, there's considerable pressure on the grid, and that pressure has been handled by building a grid that is quite heavy on the short stuff (though mercifully not heavy on outright gunk). I was not always enamored with the fill. I shouted "EAT A SANDWICH!" when I got SEND A CARD and then reshouted it at HAS A SIP (I've only had one cocktail, I swear). But there wasn't much else that made me flinch. There are a helllll of a lot of first person pronouns in this puzzle, though. Like "I" "I" "I" they just keep coming. IDK x/w I HEAR, then I'LL SEE, I'M THERE, I'LL ASK, I RAIL ... ok that last one doesn't involve a pronoun, but it's pretty bad as [letter]-[word] answers go. I've heard of IBEAM and IBAR, but not IRAIL, which sounds like an iPhone app if we lived in the USA timeline that has highspeed rail. But no, we live in this incredibly shitty timeline where the federal government is using the military to attack its own cities, its own people. This could be us ... but no:

Thanks to my making that ORTON wrestler guy my Word of the Day yesterday, I had WWE right at the top of my brain, so I actually remembered a wrestling initialism, yay me (116D: Org. that merged with the U.F.C. in 2023). I had SEETHES before SEES RED (an amazing, horrible letter-sharing coincidence) (92D: Boils with rage). I had to think for a minute about EMMA v. EYRE (1D: Title heroine described as "handsome, clever and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition"). Actually, maybe not a minute. Probably closer to a second. That description couldn't be less apt for Jane EYRE if it tried. So EMMA it was. We're currently in the middle of Mansfield Park. It is really pretty bad. We've been in the middle of it for a while now, since we only listen to it when we take trips out of town, usually up to Ithaca. Which means we'll listen to it today (i.e. Sunday), since we're going up to Cinemapolis to see Robert Redford in The Natural tomorrow. Maybe Mansfield Park will pick up? It's hard to see how the heroine is ever going to find a personality, but, to borrow a phrase from a puzzle earlier in the week: FINGERS CROSSED.

Bullets:

• 33A: Remove surgically, as tissue (ABLATE) — I had: ABRADE. I think (skin) tissue is abraded during certain (surgical?) procedures. That is my defense of my answer.
• 37A: Beethoven symphony originally intended to honor Napoleon (EROICA) — Ooh, the latest "Sticky Notes" podcast is all about what difference a conductor makes to the performance (and recording) of a piece of music, and EROICA is the piece of music being used as an example. Comparative EROICAs! I've only listened to the first ten minutes so far, but I'm eager to get back into it. If you like classical music, "Sticky Notes" is a really fine podcast.

• 63A: ___Guessr, hit online game whose players deduce locations from Google Street View images (GEO) — the phrase "hit online game" makes me laugh. Yeah, I'm not going to know that, I can guarantee you. Getting GEO was not hard to guess given that (long) clue, but LOL no idea. It does appear to be A Whole Thing...
• 77A: ___ Day, Billie Holiday's portrayer in "The United States vs. Billie Holiday" (ANDRA) — as with yesterday's NAZCA, I remember making ANDRA Word of the Day at some point in the recent past, but that did Not help me remember her today.
• 82A: He was né Clay (ALI) — omg I have never seen masculine "né" it looks cursed.
• 50D: Clown around with food? (McDONALD) — as in Ronald, truly the scariest-looking clown there is. That "It" clown? Trying too hard. This is the real nightmare fuel:

90A: Sewer in American history (ROSS) —just in case you couldn't figure out how "Sewer" = ROSS, think Betsy. "One who sews," not "waste management system."

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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Word on a French wine label / MON 7-21-25 / Situation Room grp. / Man's name that is an anagram of AISLE / Muscle used in pull-ups, informally / What two toddlers should learn to do / What an angry customer may leave

Constructor: Katy Steinmetz and Rich Katz

Relative difficulty: Easy (solved Downs-only)

THEME: "GOTTA CATCH 'EM ALL" (58A: Slogan for the Pokémon franchise ... also appropriate for 16-, 21-, 38- and 50-Across?) — things you might catch, or should catch ... don't know if you really GOTTA catch 'em ... [shrug]:

Theme answers:

• TOUCHDOWN PASSES (16A: Successful throws to the end zone)
• THE EVENING NEWS (21A: Regular 6 p.m. broadcast of daily events)
• AIRPORT SHUTTLES (38A: Vans from hotels to terminals and back)
• SPELLING ERRORS (50A: Their are fore of them hear in this sentance)

Word of the Day: ELIAS Koteas (46D: Man's name that is an anagram of AISLE) —

Elias Koteas (/ˈɛliəs kəˈteɪəs/; Greek: Ηλίας Κοτέας; born March 11, 1961) is a Canadian actor who has performed in lead and supporting roles in numerous films and television series. He won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in the film Ararat (2002).

He is known for playing Alvin "Al" Olinsky in the Chicago television series franchise. Among the prominent films in which he has performed are Some Kind of Wonderful (1987), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990), Crash (1996), Fallen (1998), The Thin Red Line (1998), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), and Shutter Island (2010). (wikipedia) 

• • •

Real summer doldrums energy today (and yesterday, frankly). The theme does absolutely nothing for me. I don't care about Pokémon at all, and thus didn't get any great (or even minor) thrill from seeing this "slogan" in the grid (I'm familiar with it, got it easily, but whatever excitement or surprise it was supposed to hold for me ... it didn't). But even if I adored the idea of a Pokémon slogan as my revealer, the theme still doesn't really work. GOTTA catch 'em all? GOTTA? No. No. WANNA, maybe. TRYNA, HOPE TO ... but GOTTA. Nobody but nobody has to "catch" THE EVENING NEWS. That answer is a really horrible outlier. From the gratuitous definite article (THE), to the fact that nobody watches (sorry, "catches") THE EVENING NEWS anymore, to the fact that all the other themers are things it is *good* to catch, whereas catching THE EVENING NEWS is, at best, neutral. If I drop a touchdown pass, bad. If I miss my airport shuttle, bad. If I fail to "catch" a spelling error, bad (apologies for all the times I have failed in this particular way). But if I miss THE EVENING NEWS ... first of all, I never think about such a phenomenon, ever. You know we can get news other ways now, right? And even if it were the 1970s and THE EVENING NEWS was a real source of information about daily events for me, I wouldn't *have* to catch it because there's always the 10 o'clock news (that's a thing, right?) or, I dunno, the morning paper the next day (since we're staying with bygone media). I dislike everything about THE EVENING NEWS, as a theme answer. You cannot let one of your themers be superweak like this. You either have a good set or you don't, and you absolutely don't go to press unless you've fleshed out a tight theme. The one thing that the theme has going for it is that each of the four themers involves a different meaning of "catch." So that's a mark in this puzzle's favor. But as far as I'm concerned, it's the only such mark.

The fill is of the short and bland and overfamiliar variety, with a couple of valiant attempts to liven things up with "Z"s (???). Sadly, shoehorning "Z"s into the grid doesn't actually do much, excitement-wise, so mostly what we have here are stale 3s 4s and 5s. Nothing exceedingly horrible (except maybe the "-IE" spelling of TEENIE), but nothing to get excited about, or even mildly interested in. TSAR ENOLA BTS URL and on and on. The north is particularly bumpy, with NO TIP topping a lineup that includes ACHOO THO, OCD, NAH ... outside the themers, there's nothing (zero, zilch) over five letters long in this whole dang grid. That makes for particularly unspicy fill. Gotta make your grids more interesting than this.

As for difficulty, there isn't any. The toughest answer for me, weirdly, was the one where the clue gave me the letters to anagram!!?! (46D: Man's name that is an anagram of AISLE) (ELIAS). At first I thought it started with "S" because I had DENI- at 45A and thought maybe it would be DENISE (as usual, I solved Downs-only, so couldn't see the Across clues). Then, when I knew it started with an "E" ... I couldn't see any name but ELISA in those letters, and thought they had screwed up the clue ("Man's name???" Uh ..."). If you can't think of a famous person with a name, maybe don't use the name! But that's it for toughness. I got the alphabet soup initialism right at 35D: Situation Room grp. (NSC) (National Security Council) on my first try! I had SLEET before SLUSH (3D: Watery snow), but that's really it for screw-ups. Really rare to have so few screw-ups in a Downs-only solve. There's usually a certain amount of stumbling and fumbling. But not today.

Bullets:

• 17D: One-named singer of "If I Could Turn Back Time" (CHER) — late-80s "rock" aesthetics were ... something. I watched The Lost Boys (1987) last night for my weekly Movie Club (started during early COVID and still going strong), and honestly you could swap those boys out for CHER's backing band here, no problem, all leather and long hair and ... what not:

• 32D: Muscle used in pull-ups, informally (BICEP) — still not comfortable with this supposed singular of biceps, since "biceps" is, in fact, singular. BICEP is a back formation (an invented spelling based on the fact that "biceps" looks plural because of its "s"-ending). The clue does say "informally." I'd prefer "substandardly," but that's even less of a word than BICEP.
• 36D: What two toddlers should learn to do (SHARE) — man I hated this clue. "Should?" What are you, Dr. Spock all of a sudden? There's no reason "two toddlers" (!?) should learn to do anything. Without a clear parental POV here, or some kind of hypothetical indicator, this clue reads weird. Prescriptive in a bizarre, unclear, off-putting way. Why not just [What parents might teach toddlers to do with their toys]. Less wordy, but in that vein. The "two" is also odd, and oddly specific. Honestly this clue looks like it's referring to some imaginary toddler joke, a la "how many toddlers does it take to ..." or "two toddlers walk into a bar ..." or something like that.
• 58D: Gossip, gossip, gossip (GAB) — no. GAB just means "talk" ("in a rapid, thoughtless manner"), not "gossip three times." Or even one time.
• 62D: Word on a French wine label (CRU) — often preceded by "Grand" or "Premier." CRU means "growth." CRU is also the informal name of the group of crossword solvers who have a welcome dinner at the ACPT every year (due to its punny connection to "crew" ... I think). Here's a picture of me at said dinner with CRU leader Michael Alpern. I forget why I'm throwing my arms in the air triumphantly. Perhaps because they clapped instead of booed when Michael announced my name.

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Bud after Jack, perhaps? / SUN 2-9-25 / Picture of Pluto, for instance / Bit of rasta headwear / Cylindrical Mexican pastry / Scout's container / "Like ___," rap hit fueling the Drake/Kendrick Lamar beef of 2024 / Spanish muralist whose "American Progress" is in the lobby of 30 Rockefeller Center / Pink drink, for short / Toy inventor with a background in sculpture and architecture / Adam's apple locale / Head of a noted animal rescue project / Indian dish featuring potatoes and cauliflower / It's stranded in a cell

Constructor: Rich Katz and Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Way Too Easy 

THEME: "What's It All About?" — two-word phrases where second word starts with the prefix "RE-," clued as if the prefix were actually the abbreviation "RE:," i.e. "Regarding" (or, in the words of the puzzle's title, "About"): 

Theme answers:

• SPECIAL RE: QUEST (23A: TV's "Search for the Titanic," for one?)
• MANUAL RE: COUNT (35A: Instructions for slaying Dracula?)
• SHOW RE: MORSE (51A: Broadway offering titled with dots and dashes?)
• SPEECH RE: COGNITION (70A: TED Talk about neuropsychology?)
• SPOT RE: MOVER (86A: U-Haul ad?)
• CHAIN RE: ACTION (101A: Email thread with a "Donate now!" message?)
• HIGH RE: SOLUTION (116A: Giddiness at completing this crossword puzzle?)

Word of the Day: 'Like THAT" (43D: "Like ___," rap hit fueling the Drake/Kendrick Lamar beef of 2024) —

"Like That" is a song by American rapper Future and record producer Metro Boomin with fellow American rapper Kendrick Lamar. It was sent to US rhythmic radio through Freebandz, Boominati Worldwide, Epic Records, and Republic as the third and final single from Future and Metro's collaborative studio album, We Don't Trust You, on March 26, 2024.[...]

A trap and hardcore hip hop song that is predominantly composed of lively percussions, "Like That" received acclaim from music critics, who primarily praised Lamar's performance and Metro's production. His verse, which attracted significant media coverage, is a diss aimed at fellow rappers Drake and J. Cole in response to their 2023 collaboration, "First Person Shooter." "Like That" was quickly met with commercial success, debuting atop the Billboard Hot 100, where it would spend three weeks, as well as topping the Global 200 and the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs charts simultaneously. It was both Future and Lamar's third number-one single on the former chart, and Metro's first as a credited artist. The song also topped the Canadian Hot 100 and peaked within the top ten of several countries in Europe and Oceania. [...] 

Lyrically, Lamar uses his surprise appearance to directly respond to "First Person Shooter", rapping: "Yeah, get up with me, fuck sneak dissing / "First Person Shooter", I hope they came with three switches". He also rejected J. Cole's idea of the three rappers representing hip hop as its "big three" and claims that he alone takes the top spot: "Motherfuck the big three, nigga it's just big me". Throughout his verse, Lamar compares his rivalry with Drake to Prince's reported feud with Michael Jackson ("What? I'm really like that / And your best work is a light pack / Nigga, Prince outlived Mike Jack"). Drake has notably compared himself to Michael Jackson on numerous occasions, including during the final verse of "First Person Shooter", and Lamar has similarly compared himself to Prince. (wikipedia)

• • •

What was that? I solved that (just now) in about 6 or 7 minutes, *without* speeding. There were answers here and there that I didn't know straight away, I guess, but not many. The main problem, though, isn't that the puzzle's overly easy—it's that it's supremely boring. Zero laughs. OK, so you reimagine the "RE-"s as "RE:"s ... and? There should be some kind of Payoff for your gimmick, but instead, there's just a mirthless "yeah, I guess that works" vibe to every single one of the themers. Worse, the puzzle thinks it's being cute and building to some grand climax by having the final themer be all meta and self-reflexive and cutesy and winky (116A: Giddiness at completing this crossword puzzle?). This felt like the one-notiest of one-note puzzles (that note being RE ... the note between DO and MI ... a SOUR NOTE, indeed) (look, I gotta find some way to amuse myself, and the puzzle is giving me very little to work with, so dumb jokes about "notes" is what you get). One-note puzzles are OK on a weekday, in a regular 15x15 grid, if that one note is a good one, but for a Sunday, you gotta do better than this. Even if the puzzle is simple, those themers have to bring a lot more heat, a lot more chuckle fuel than this. It's not bad so much as dull, and definitely insufficiently tough. It seems that no one involved in the making of this puzzle ever thought, "yes, we *can* do this theme ... but SHOULD WE?" (75A: "So is this our plan or not?"). 

One feature of the theme that deserves some recognition is that the changing of "RE-" to "RE:" brings with it a change of the meaning of both words on either side of "RE:," every time. So "RE-" changes meaning (to "RE:" / "About"), but so does SPECIAL and QUEST, MANUAL and COUNT, etc. That's a nice feature. And yet, the RE: phrases were so awkward most of the time that solving them felt like a tedious mechanical exercise. CHAIN RE: ACTION was particularly clunky. Can't think of the last time I thought of an "email thread" as a CHAIN (it's a "thread," as the clue rightly says), and why would a CHAIN contain a single message ("Donate now!")? You'd think one email would've done the trick there. Not a very efficient way to get the word out. Further, if the show is about Morse (SHOW RE: MORSE), why is it "titled" with "dots and dashes?" (51A: Broadway offering titled with dots and dashes?) It's the "titled" part I don't get. Why would the "title" of your show about Morse be in Morse (code)? The whole thing just didn't resonate with me. Maybe if the puzzle had slowed me down At All, if I'd been forced to really work out the themers, I would (somehow) have had greater appreciation of them. I dunno. I just know that this was fun-free for me. It's not even enjoyably bad. There are no howlers or inanities that I can take pleasure digging into. The puzzle is just ... there. Taking up Sunday-sized space until the next Sunday rolls around.

[Sidenote of little relevance to the overall enjoyability of this puzzle, but ... why in the world are there cheater squares* in this thing!? The black squares after DAB and after SPY (and their symmetrical equivalents), why? You usually bring in cheaters when there's just too much strain on the grid, when it's hard to fill cleanly and you need to release some pressure. But ... It's not like things are particularly dense up there (or down below). Were things really so taxing that you had to add these superfluous black squares? Whoa, there's another one (under BRATT, above CHAIR). How is making short answers even shorter going to improve the overall appeal of your grid? I have to assume that without those extra black squares, the fill got real ugly ... so maybe I should be grateful those squares are there. Also, if the theme had been fabulous, I probably wouldn't even be noticing them; I certainly wouldn't be caring]

Though the puzzle was very easy, there were a few times where I had to stop and think today, outside the first couple themers. Like 96A: Bud after Jack, perhaps? (CHASER). That is (I realized eventually), Budweiser after Jack Daniels. Good one (no, really, I liked it). I had ---N for 77D: Adam's apple locale and was very very briefly mad that the answer was going to be CHIN ("what the!?"), then noticed that the "a" in "apple" wasn't capitalized ... which I'm now realizing doesn't mean a damn thing (that's how you spell "Adam's apple"), but somehow when I was solving, I thought "oh, that lowercase "a" means it's a regular apple, not the anatomical apple." Bizarre how being totally wrong (about the capitalization of "apple" in "Adam's apple") can lead to the right conclusion (in this case, EDEN). I had AWAKE and maybe even ALERT before AHEAD at 3D: Up. I briefly cast Mark HAMILL (!?!?!) in "NCIS," and then when I recast Mark HARM-N, I recast him like that (without the final vowel—totally unsure). Needed several crosses to remember ALOO GOBI, which is delicious, but the technical name of which I blanked on. But otherwise, there was almost no resistance today. Not only that, there was really no interesting or original fill to ooh and/or aah over. It was all pretty dreary. Not even dreary. Just ... plain. Unless I'm supposed to be excited about ERNO RUBIK (I'm not).

How long did it take you to figure out the theme? I needed two themers. When I got SPECIAL RE: QUEST, I thought that the first "quest' was the Titanic voyage itself, and then the "Search for the Titanic" was a separate, follow-up quest—a RE-QUEST. "Well, that first quest didn't quite work out the way we'd planned. Let's try another!" It was only when trying to make sense of the clue on MANUAL RE: COUNT that I had the "aha" moment of noticing that the "RE-" was supposed to be read as "RE:" It's not that the basic idea isn't clever, in its way, but ... there's just not a lot you can do with it. All the "humor" is in the clues, and there's just not that much juice to be squozen out of the core concept. When the grid fails to pick up the slack in terms of either interest or difficulty level, well, you get [waves hands at grid] this. 

 Not much that needs explaining, but ...:

• 11A: Place in a pyramid, say (ENTOMB) — Yesterday, I listened to the latest episode of Karina Longworth's You Must Remember This... podcast, which is about late-career Howard Hawks. Extremely coincidentally, this ended up helping me get this answer faster than I might have otherwise, as much of the episode was about Hawks's Land of the Pharaohs (1955), which is about a Pharaoh who has a robber-proof pyramid built (over the course of many, many years) so he can be ENTOMBed with all this treasure without fear of grave-robbers taking all his stuff.  William Faulkner (who did not like movies and did not watch them) is one of the credited screenwriters. He didn't know how Pharaohs talked. No one involved in the production did. Does anyone? Anyway, the movie ... did not do well.

• 48A: Bit of Rasta headwear (TAM) — can you really have a "bit of headwear?" Why isn't this just [Rasta headwear]? "Bit" is bizarre. 
• 84A: Scout's container (CANTEEN) — first thought: "Why is Scout (from To Kill A Mockingbird) in a container?" Nobody puts Scout in a container!

• 78D: Spanish muralist whose "American Progress" is in the lobby of 30 Rockefeller Center (SERT) — if you solved crosswords in the 20th century, you definitely know SERT, and if not ... probably not, I'm guessing. (This is only the third appearance of SERT in the 2020s, whereas SERT appeared eight times in 1992 alone)

I hope you enjoyed this much more than I did, or, if not, that you finished quickly, maybe even broke your personal Sunday record. Someone must have broken their record. I can't be alone in thinking this was supremely easy. Or maybe I can be alone. It's been a weird week / month / year, and a long cold lonely winter. Discovering that I'm an outlier (in puzzles, and in general) surprises me less and less these days. I'm getting used to it. Hopefully next Sunday I love a puzzle you all hate. :) Remember the "Art Heist" puzzle? Good times ... See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*"Cheater squares" are black squares that do not add to the overall word count, usually added to the grid solely to make filling the grid easier for the constructor(s).   

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