Male influencer archetype / SAT 5-31-25 / Toy doll brand since 2001 / Rod's employer in "Get Out," in brief / Chip maker in a 1961 merger / Participant in a hybrid sport that requires both brains and brawn / Symbol of rebirth in ancient Egypt / Wry response to a this-or-that question / Eponym of Pittsburgh's tallest building / Ride-or-die sort, in brief / Likely spot for a pipe jam

Constructor: Adam Aaronson and Ricky Cruz

Relative difficulty: Medium (Easy-Medium with a very hard (for me) SW corner)

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: E-BOY (54A: Male influencer archetype) —

E-kids, as e-girls and e-boys, are a youth subculture of Gen Z that emerged in the late 2010s, notably popularized by the video-sharing application TikTok.^[3] It is an evolution of emo, scene and mall goth fashion combined with Japanese and Korean street fashion.

Videos by e-girls and e-boys tend to be flirtatious and, many times, overtly sexual. Eye-rolling and protruding tongues (a facial expression known as ahegao, imitating climaxing) are common.

According to Business Insider, the terms are not gender-specific, instead referring to two separate styles of fashion, stating that "While the e-boy is a vulnerable 'softboi' and embraces skate culture, the e-girl is cute and seemingly innocent". [...] 

By the late-2010s, e-boys had split from this original all female culture, embracing elements of emo, mallgoth, and scene culture. The popularity and eventual death of emo rapper Lil Peep also influenced the beginnings of the subculture, with the New York Post describing him as "the patron musical saint of e-land". E-boys also make use of "soft-boy aesthetics" through presenting themselves as sensitive and vulnerable. According to the Brown Daily Herald this is due to a transformation of ideal male attractiveness from being traditionally masculine to embracing introvertedness, shyness, emotional vulnerability and androgyny.

• • •

A lovely puzzle except for the SW corner, which had me literally exclaiming, out loud, "I'm too old for this shit." I have definitely looked up the whole "E-kid" / "E-girl" / "E-BOY" phenomenon before, when I've seen it in puzzles, but I guess I keep forgetting it because I barely believe it's real and also I just don't care. Also, when I see the terms "Male" and "influencer" next to each other, all I see is the so-called "manosphere" and the array of idiotic misogynist "influencers" who seem to reign there. I didn't enjoy much about the SW corner, but one thing I did enjoy was discovering that my initial answer for 54A: Male influencer archetype was not, in fact, ELON (I had the "E" and the "O" and I live in the world's most depressing timeline, so ... I dunno, it made a kind of awful sense). The other thing down there that made even less sense to me was CHESS BOXER, which ... I don't even know what to say (47A: Participant in a hybrid sport that requires both brains and brawn). As far as I know, these are two perfectly good words that were put next to each other for the first time only today. As with E-BOY, I barely believe "chess boxing" is real and also I just don't care. Don't play chess, don't care about boxing. Where has this "sport" been hiding? Why would you ever want to watch it? I will say, though, that—as with E-BOY—I was pretty amused by my original wrong answer here: MENSA BOXER. Of course I had nothing but contempt for the term, but the idea of some MENSA guy getting the shit beat out of him somehow gave me a flicker of joy. I am very much a pacifist, but if the MENSA guy *chooses* to get in a ring and get hammered, I refuse to feel bad about finding the idea mildly pleasing. So that whole corner can rot, really. But the rest of this puzzle, I quite liked. This is the only upside of a highly segmented grid (where the corners play like separate, nearly self-contained puzzles)—one ugly corner doesn't necessarily bleed out and bring the rest of the puzzle down with it.

You can add ALT-METAL to the CHESS BOXER / E-BOY mix. Yet another coinage that made me go "?" (14D: Genre for Soundgarden and Linkin Park). I always though of Soundgarden as part of the greater Grunge universe (because it is). I had the METAL part, but was left guessing at what surprise prefix the puzzle would have in store for me today. Not NU-, that wouldn't fit. "NEO?" "NEW?" "EMO?" No, it's ALT, which is weirdly the answer I put in first for 11D: Fake account (LIE), though I guess an ALT is really just an alternate (social media) account not necessarily a "fake" one. Happily (for me), everything else in the puzzle was familiar to me, if still frequently (and appropriately) hard to turn up. Some major gimmes helped me along the way today, the most important of which was right up front at 1A: Where one might have a mic and a Michelob (KARAOKE BAR). I put the answer in tentatively and then was semi-surprised when the crosses immediately started checking out. ELL (i.e. the bend in a pipe) ... BAA (as in "Baa baa black sheep") ... AVATAR ... whoops, not AVATAR, but that didn't take too long to fix (9D: Something found next to a handle = AT SIGN). That toehold gave me the NW corner in reasonable time, and it's a lovely corner (with very nice stack of long answers), and since the clues seemed to be suitably amped up to Saturday-level difficulty, I was enjoying myself early on. That SW corner really was an anomaly, both in terms of difficulty and in terms of overall likability. Everywhere else in the grid was bright and relatively breezy. It's a bit trivia-y, this one, which is gonna alienate some people, for sure. Kinda the opposite vibe from yesterday's puzzle (which felt very light on proper nouns and other potentially exclusionary stuff). But I still mostly enjoyed the challenge.

Finished up in the SW, which seems like it should've been hard but wasn't because ZEITGEISTY (best answer in the puzzle?) came real easy off the "Z" in BRATZ (48D: Toy doll brand since 2001). FRESNO would've been a gimme even if I hadn't grown up there. And while I did not know that the "T" in "captcha" stood for TURING TEST, I know what a TURING TEST is and so got it very easily from a handful of crosses. Seems like a lot of clues might need explaining today, so let's get to it:

Explainers:

• 16A: Member of BTS or Blackpink, e.g. (IDOL) — these are K-Pop bands. Seems weird to clue IDOL with a catchall "I dunno, pick one" kind of clue like this. I'm sure they are all individually IDOLs in their own ways, but if they're actual IDOLs then it seems like they should have individual name recognition. Which I'm sure they do. To some. If you replace "BTS" or "Blackpink" with "The Beatles," you'll see how weird the clue is (despite being technically accurate).
• 24A: Symbol of rebirth in ancient Egypt (DUNG BEETLE) — speaking of "Beatles!" I can't spell the damned word because of the damned band!
• 29A: Subatomic particle named after an Indian physicist (BOSON) — everything after "particle" in this clue is useless to me. Am I supposed to know this physicist? I got this answer easily enough, but only because I know the subatomic particles of Crossworld.
• 32A: Count Vronsky's titular lover in a classic Tolstoy novel (ANNA) — another gimme. I can't believe they put "Tolstoy" in the clue. Take the training wheels off! People can infer the Russianness from "Vronsky" easy enough, even if they know nothing about ANNA Karenina per se (I've only read it once, but still consider it one of my favorite novels)
• 50A: Chip maker in a 1961 merger (LAY) — well I broke through the computer chip misdirection to the potato chip center of this clue, but sadly my first three-letter potato chip brand was UTZ. Pretty sure LAY merged with FRITO ... yup.

• 3D: 500 people? (RACERS) — so, Indy 500, not Fortune 500, as I'd originally thought (RICHES?).
• 12D: Pass words? (ADMIT ONE) — these words might be printed on a "pass" (i.e. ticket to an event). Really wanted something obituary-related here.
• 26D: Eur. land with more than 60,000 miles of coast (NOR.) — man, that's a lot of miles. That's more than twice the circumference of the Earth. I guess fjords after fjord after fjord will really add to the coastal surface area of a country. According to wikipedia "Norway's coastline is estimated to be 29,000 km (18,000 mi) long with its nearly 1,200 fjords" Huh. Hmm. 18,000 is a lot less than 60,000, so ... not sure where that 60,000 number is coming from.
• 29D: Competition with some defining moments? (BEE) — as in "Spelling BEE" (contestants can ask for a definition)
• 42D: Rod's employer in "Get Out," in brief (TSA) — when I had MENSA BOXER in the grid, I also had Rod working for AAA. Towing cars, I guess.
• 35D: Two-person shot (ALLEY OOP) — oy this took me way too long. Thought the "shot" was a photography term. But it's just the flashy basketball shot where one player throws the ball up and a second player grabs it mid-air and slams it home.
• 55D: Wry response to a this-or-that question (YES) — "this-or-that question" is not a question type I know. "Yes-or-no," that's a question type. I can infer what the clue means, but somehow that phrase threw me. Yet another thing about the SW that I had trouble getting a handle on. Speaking of which ...
• 34D: Not likely to leave a mark, say (WASHABLE) — uh ... something else (blood, mud, ink) leaves a mark on your clothes; your clothes (whether WASHABLE or not) don't have agency. They don't do the leaving or not leaving. But I guess this refers specifically to WASHABLE ... ink? I've only heard the word WASHABLE used in reference to clothing, but WASHABLE ink exists so ...  yeah, just one more thing about that SW corner I CAN (not) RELATE to.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Court athlete informally / THU 9-28-23 / Portmanteau for a certain self-taken video on a smartphone / Video game hero who battles the evil Dr. Wily / Common five-petaled flower / Place to order patatas bravas / Bygone owner of Capital Records

Constructor: Ricky Cruz

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: key signatures — regular clues appear to the right of musical notation indicating initial key signature (i.e. the five lines of the staff with clef + various sharps and flats); thus, the clues are imagined as if they are in a certain key (IN C, IN A, etc.), and those key phrases are added to the ends of the clued answers to get new, unclued answers:

Theme answers:

• "MONSTERS, INC."
• BALLERINA
• PALESTINE
• FALLING FLAT

... clued as follows:

MONSTERS (17A: Some energy drinks) IN C = "Monsters, Inc."

BALLER (30A: Court athlete, slangily) IN A = ballerina 

PALEST (45A: Most wan) IN E = Palestine 

FALL (61A: Leaf-raking time) IN G FLAT = falling flat 

Word of the Day: EIDETIC (34A: ___ memory (ability to recall images with high precision)) —

Eidetic memory (/aɪˈdɛtɪk/ eye-DET-ik; also known as photographic memory and total recall) is the ability to recall an image from memory with high precision—at least for a brief period of time—after seeing it only once and without using a mnemonic device.

Although the terms eidetic memory and photographic memory are popularly used interchangeably, they are also distinguished, with eidetic memory referring to the ability to see an object for a few minutes after it is no longer present and photographic memory referring to the ability to recall pages of text or numbers, or similar, in great detail. When the concepts are distinguished, eidetic memory is reported to occur in a small number of children and is generally not found in adults, while true photographic memory has never been demonstrated to exist.

The word eidetic comes from the Greek word εἶδος (pronounced [êːdos], eidos) "visible form". (wikipedia)

• • •

"EROICA" (as seen in Psycho)

Less time today because I have to teach and also because much of my writing time was just taken up trying to image-capture and typeset the theme clues (above). Lots of tech fail on my part! Speaking of tech (if not exactly fail), I'm gonna start with MEGAMAN and SLOFIE, which is the kind of fill that makes me sad because it reminds me of how much of what passes for young-skewing or current or hip fill these days is extremely online or otherwise tech-oriented. Congrats to the tech overlords for convincing everyone that the pathway to freedom and self-expression and identity lies in screens. This isn't new (TV ruined boomers, TV and home video gaming ruined my generation (X), etc. etc.) but the phone has perfected it and now reality happens on screens and ... I don't know what's happening in this meat-sack world we used to call "reality." Bodies ... moving around ... angry ... not paying attention. Anyway, I am trying to make peace with the fact that minimizing the role of screens in my life is going to mean accelerating my detachment from popular culture (including cutesy self-documentation terminology). Sucks to get old, but it sucks more to be glued to the depression- and anger-making machine that is your phone / The Internet, so ... I dunno. Win some lose some (I've been reading Naomi Klein-not-Wolf's Doppelganger, please forgive my tech despair). MEGAMAN has been around since 1987, so there's no good reason that's unfamiliar to me (14A: Video game hero who battles the evil Dr. Wily). Gaming was never my thing. Shrug. As for SLOFIE ... look, the reason I hate SLOFIE more than I would normally hate an extremely embarrassing tech portmanteau like SLOFIE is that it was the *last* thing I entered, the last thing I pieced together, and I was truly enjoying the puzzle up to that point. So just when I'm ready for the puzzle to stick the landing, it serves me the heaping plate of garbage that is SLOFIE. Real mood-killer, that stupid "word." You absolutely do not have to cram the latest dumb word into your grid to prove that you aren't one of the OLDS, I promise. The high quality of your work is enough. I'm just glad I could piece together what the elements of the portmanteau were (slow + selfie), because I famously (and probably not exclusively) never can remember how to spell Jackson POLL-CK.

But anyway, the theme: it's great. I particularly love how it takes musical crosswordese you see all the time (key signatures like IN C, IN A, IN E, or notes like G FLAT) and then, by incorporating them into this bizarro magical musical theme, makes them parts of longer, familiar words and phrases ("MONSTERS, INC." BALLERINA etc.). Putting a regular old clue *in a key*. Like, actually giving it a musical setting, literally putting it on a staff ... it's ingenious. MONSTERS might have been hard for those who are not up on their energy drink terminology, and BALLER might have been hard for those who are not up on their basketball terminology, but the basic concept here seems very clear ... once you finally see it. Happy to see FALL IN G FLAT, the obvious best of the bunch, occupying its rightful place at the bottom of the grid—always good to finish big. Only wish I'd actually literally finished there, instead of with the "O" in SLOFIE. Just saying the word feels awful. Just looking at it. It's like the sound of a sloth vomiting.

Hey, did you know EIDETIC!? I did! Or, I "did"—by which I mean I got "EI-" and looked at the clue and my brain shrugged and went "... is this something?" while handing me EIDETIC. "I dunno, brain, let's find out!" And it was right. LOL, there are so many technical words like that that all just blur together in my head in a jargony soup. "Diegetic" is in there ... "epideictic" ... "enclitic" ... "ekphrasis" ... "E"s seem to be involved a lot. Anyway, threw up EIDETIC from half court and ... swish! Outside of that word (and the MEGAMAN SLOFIE, of course), everything in the grid felt familiar and solid and nicely varied. BONE IN! CAT TREATS! NEGRONIS! TAPAS BAR! It's a tasty night out for you and your cat! The "?" clues did their thing, i.e. slowed me down a bit. [Frequent flier?] (JET) could've been a lot of things (initial thought: BAT). I thought [Jerky?] was going to have to do with spasms, but I took the wrong misdirection path there. "Jerky" as in "Jerk-y" as in "like a jerk," i.e. IMPOLITE. Nice. Didn't like the boring "on the Hollywood Walk of Fame" clue they gave GLADYS Knight. It's the worst possible clue you can give a celeb. It's like you hate them and don't want to mention anything they've actually done. And in GLADYS's case, she's done a lot. Legend. 

See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Physicist Nathan with an early theory of wormholes / SAT 7-24-21 / The wrinkle in "A Wrinkle in Time" and the Cosmic Cube in Marvel Comics, for two / Auto pioneer Soichiro / Popular brand of alcoholic seltzer / Starting point of annual Spartathlon / Garment that might not be worn around the house

Constructor: Adam Aaronson and Ricky Cruz

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: TESSERACTS (4D: The wrinkle in "A Wrinkle in Time" and the Cosmic Cube in Marvel Comics, for two) —

In geometry, the tesseract is the four-dimensional analogue of the cube; the tesseract is to the cube as the cube is to the square. Just as the surface of the cube consists of six square faces, the hypersurface of the tesseract consists of eight cubical cells. The tesseract is one of the six convex regular 4-polytopes.

The tesseract is also called an eight-cell, C₈, (regular) octachoron, octahedroid, cubic prism, and tetracube. It is the four-dimensional hypercube, or 4-cube as a part of the dimensional family of hypercubes or measure polytopes. Coxeter labels it the polytope. The term hypercube without a dimension reference is frequently treated as a synonym for this specific shape.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word tesseract was first used in 1888 by Charles Howard Hinton in his book A New Era of Thought, from the Greek téssara (τέσσαρα'four') and aktís (ἀκτίς 'ray'), referring to the four edges from each vertex to other vertices. In this publication, as well as some of Hinton's later work, the word was occasionally spelled tessaract.

• • •

Seemed a bit trivia-testish at times (a physicist here, a supermodel there, an ethnic minority here, a Roman goddess there, and so on), and only COINKYDINK and OVER/UNDER felt like they really came to play, but it's a solid enough effort overall. WHITE CLAW really put me off the puzzle right away, just from a personal taste standpoint. It was a gimme, first of all, so ... I mean, normally, I guess I'd be thrilled to nail 1-Across on a Saturday like that, but somehow just knowing what WHITE CLAW is doesn't feel like a win. It's ubiquitous. Hugely popular, apparently. If I want seltzer I drink seltzer and if I want alcohol I drink cocktails, or maybe wine, occasionally beer. The whole "let's spike this non-alcoholic thing and see what happens" trend ... never got it. But jillions of people do. What bummed me out wasn't so much that I don't drink the stuff (who cares?) but that it feels so product-placement-y to put a brand like this at 1-Across. I'll be slightly surprised if their social media team doesn't do some jokey tweet or Insta post about this crossword appearance before day's end. Brands have been in grids for a long time, so there's nothing "wrong" with this one at all. Giving your highest-profile answer to a brand—that was just a mild bummer to me today. I also was weirdly distracted by a couple repeated letter patterns, namely TESS /  TESSERACTS and TATTOO INK / TIME SINKS / COINKYDINK). Maybe that latter repetition is a *good* thing, looked at from a certain angle—think of it as deliberate rhyme, or echoing, or singsonginess. But I probably would've found a way to replace TESS if I could've. Repeated four-letter strings don't usually bother me but then again they usually aren't at the front of both words (higher profile). ANIMA / BEANS / BESS, something like that ... though I wouldn't want to deprive the world of the "Sailor Moon" clue, so maybe there are other options) (32D: "Sailor Moon" genre => ANIME)

Only felt old once during this puzzle ("WHIPS, you say!? Bah! Listen, sonny, in my day ... I forget what we called them, but it wasn't WHIPS!") (1D: Fancy cars, in modern slang), but then the puzzle went and actually made me feel young by opting for the fully-spelled BRASSIERE, which ... is not a word I've heard used unironically in my lifetime. They're bras. Of course BRASSIERE is a perfectly good, actual word, but it really feels like clues for BRASSIERE should have to use qualifiers like "quaintly" or "formally" or something when referring to BRASSIERE. I did love the clue, though (31D: Garment that might not be worn around the house). Many women solvers undoubtedly nodding "true" there. Is a NAILER what we usually call a "nail gun"? I will admit to being not a tool person, but a NAILER sounds like someone actually striking the nails. Maybe NAILER is the preferred term now because it doesn't have the word "gun" in it. That seems fine. Are we still going to Palm for our PDA cluing needs? (18A: Palm products, for short). Is Palm even still a thing? Looks like it died but then came back in 2018 as an Android phone of some sort. But not a PDA. That term remains bygone. Like the original Palm products. PDA = kissing in public. If you want to go with "personal digital assistant," you must use "bygone" or "quaintly" in your clue (see discussion of BRASSIERE above ... btw, did you know women used to keep their Palm PDAS in their BRASSIEREs? It's true! [citation needed]). As for THEESPYS, I normally find the gratuitous definitely article slightly annoying, but today it didn't bother me at all, possibly because my brain is reparsing it slightly and applying it to the name of a beloved children's lit character, which is to say I'm amusing myself by imagining a character called "Harriet THEE Spy," à la: 

No real difficulty today (beyond the usual Saturday difficulty). I thought the auto pioneer was Soichiro ACURA at first, so that was pretty funny (2D: Auto pioneer Soichiro => HONDA). Rare that I actually enjoy my mistakes, but I enjoyed that one. Had TIMESUCKS before TIMESINKS (enjoyed that mistake less) (38A: Long, unproductive activities). Didn't know the ROSEN guy (23A: Physicist Nathan with an early theory of wormholes), forgot TESS (though she's been in the puzzle before), but remembered TESSERACTS despite having no idea how to define it; it's just one of those vaguely scifi words you see around and take in and then somehow "know" without knowing (that is, if you're me). This puzzle did a good Saturday job of being a Saturday puzzle that I solved on a Saturday. Definitely better than MEH, despite my various minor carps.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. Please enjoy this up-to-the-minute DANK (54A) content:

Need to know more about Sue Bird’s mom’s boyfriend, Harry Dank. pic.twitter.com/tzyUJlLAAl

— Josh Rowntree (@JRown32) July 24, 2021

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Gray in the face / TUES 9-29-20 / Subject of una balada / They do dos / Not be serious

Hello! It's Clare — here for yet another Tuesday crossword! I'm one million weeks into my final year of law school (at least that's how it feels), and things have been mostly running smoothly with online classes after some early problems. I did almost die of secondhand embarrassment the other day in class when a girl started complaining about how boring and useless the class was... and her microphone was turned on! (Now I always triple check my mic is off; and I have this fear that my camera will just randomly turn on, so I bought a lens cover!) Hope everyone is staying safe in these continually weird times...

Now to the puzzle!

Constructor: Ricky Cruz

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: BREAKS CHARACTER (38A: Can't hold back laughter while performing, say ... or a hint to the circled letters) — Each of the theme answers is a symbol whose name is broken up between two answers.

Theme answers:

• TILDE (18A: unTIL and 19A: DEnse)
• HYPHEN (24A: asHY and 25A: PHENoms)
• AMPERSAND (51A: cAMPERS and 53A: ANDy)
• ASTERISK (61A: hASTE and 62A: RISKy)

Word of the Day: LYDIA (21D) —

Lydia Ko (born 24 April 1997) is a Korean-born New Zealand professional golfer who became the No. 1-ranked woman professional golfer on February 2, 2015 at 17 years, 9 months and 9 days of age, making her the youngest player of either gender to be ranked No. 1 in professional golf. (WIki) 

• • •

Overall, I quite liked this puzzle. The theme was clever; the puzzle was nicely executed; and there was a good revealer. I'm not always a huge fan of puzzles with circles in them, but I think the constructor here made really good use of them. As a whole, I found the puzzle engaging and amusing.

That being said, I didn't find that there were a lot of interesting or clever words/clues in the puzzle. There wasn't much junk in the puzzle, either, but I'm having a much harder time than usual figuring out what to say about this puzzle. There just isn't much of note about the individual words, even those that provide the theme (UNTIL, DENSE, ASHY, PHENOMS, etc...).

Some of the more "punny" answers, like OVENS (2D: Devices relied upon to a high degree?), BASE (12D: It might be stolen in full view), and DARE (27A: Alternative to truth?), livened things up a tad. My favorite clue/answer might have been 8D: They do dos as SALONS. I also liked some of the longer acrosses: COLONIAL, EMULATED, and ROSARIES. I don't think this was intended, but I got a slight mythological theme from the puzzle (maybe it's because I just read the book "A Song of Achilles," which I highly recommend — seriously, everyone should read this!) with SPARTA, OMEN, and HERC. Because I had mythology on the brain, when I got to 60A: A siren's wail, e.g., it took me a while to realize the answer was BLARE and not something else having to do with Odysseus.

As much as I liked the slight mythological feel, it does cue up the first of two nits I had with the puzzle. The clue for 26D: Nickname for a mythological hero as HERC just didn't sit right, because Hercules was only ever called HERC in the Disney movie version; cluing this nickname as being a mythological hero is pretty misleading. The second nit is bigger: Why in the world is the answer for 37A: One of many for baking soda: USE ? Is that the best clue for the word we could find? Why single out baking powder for many uses? It just strikes me as random and slightly bizarre.

Bullets:

• When I first went through the puzzle, I put "up til" for 18A: No later than rather instead of UNTIL. It took me a bit to find my mistake, as I realized "map" made absolutely no sense for 5D: "Whew!"
• I remember taking part in Greek Games when I was in elementary school, as we were all assigned different city-states to be in. I remember I was in... actually, I don't remember. I just know it wasn't SPARTA or Athens. I also know my city-state ended up winning, and my toga was epic.
• Fun fact: "Hercules" is the Roman version of the name, which became more popular with the Disney movie. He's Heracles to the Greeks. As he was the product of one of Zeus' 14 million affairs, the goddess Hera hated him and tried to mess with him on every occasion, She sent snakes to kill him when he was a baby (he strangled the snakes in his crib), and she drove him crazy. He killed his wife and their kids, so he went to an oracle and was told to atone by performing the 12 labors he's famous for. See what Disney doesn't tell you?!
• And now, as a treat for reading this whole thing, here's your monthly BTS update — my favorite artist, a K-pop group, is going to be on The Tonight Show all week long, so I highly suggest tuning in!! It should be a blast and a half.

Happy almost October! Stay safe.

Signed, Clare Carroll, toga queen

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Lee known for his cameos / THU 6-18-20 / Cosmic force / Rocky Mountain city once home to Anaconda Copper Mining Company / One of McMahons of WWE / Offering at pier restaurant

Constructor: Ricky Cruz

Relative difficulty: Challenging (7:21)

THEME: CAR / VAN / SEMI / TRUCK / BUS (39A: [Ugh, we've been stuck here for an hour...]) — a TRAFFIC JAM (61A: Situation depicted at 39-Across) and three arbitrary, vaguely related other themers:

Theme answers:

• BOTTLENECK (17A: Possible cause of a 61-Across) 
• INTERSTATE (11D: Bad place for a 61-Across) (there are *good* places for them?)
• LATE TO WORK (28D: What a 61-Across might make you)

Word of the Day: "KUBO and the Two Strings" (2016 animated film) (1D) —

Kubo and the Two Strings is a 2016 American stop-motion animated action fantasy film directed by Travis Knight (in his directorial debut). It is produced by Laika. It stars the voices of Charlize Theron, Art Parkinson, Ralph Fiennes, George Takei, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Brenda Vaccaro, Rooney Mara, and Matthew McConaughey. The film revolves around Kubo, a young boy who wields a magical shamisen (a Japanese stringed instrument) and whose left eye was stolen during infancy. Accompanied by an anthropomorphic snow monkey and beetle, he must subdue his mother's corrupted Sisters and his power-hungry grandfather Raiden the Moon King, who is responsible for stealing his left eye. (wikipedia)

• • •

This is a mess, and a rehash of a concept I've seen elsewhere. The center answer feels vaguely unfair, in the sense that it's not a word, or a phrase. It's just a series of vehicle types ... when you're trying to pick vehicle types out of thin air, with no way of knowing what they might be *except* via the *one* Down answer, yeeeesh. Kinda violates the law of US crosswords that all squares must be checked. I see how knowing there's a vehicle type in there acts as a kind of check, but oof. Unpleasant. The idea that that center answer "depicts" a TRAFFIC JAM seems preposterous, in that ... it only does so because the TRAFFIC JAM clue says it does so. Absent that clue, 61-Across looks like ... maybe a parking lot, or a line of cars at a light, or a drive-thru window, I dunno. There Are Only Five Of Them. Nothing particularly "jam"-y about it. I get that you are "jamming" (??) the answers into little squares, but if that's your big punchline ... I think it's gonna miss a lot of people. Further, the three other themers are all arbitrary and not terribly "jam"-y either. I think of BOTTLENECK as more of a synonym of TRAFFIC JAM than a "cause"; INTERSTATE is just a random road ... no reason a TRAFFIC JAM there is any "bad"-er than a TRAFFIC JAM anywhere else; and LATE TO WORK ... sigh, it's adjectival where the others aren't, and again, totally arbitrary, but it gives you symmetry with INTERSTATE I guess so put it in there, sure, why not? The whole thing was made more grueling and tedious by the cluing, which was way harder than normal. The NW corner alone was an astonishing chore. First pass yielded absolutely nothing. Thank god I got the BOTTLE part of BOTTLENECK, because I desperately needed all those letters. Thought the answer might be RUBBERNECK at first ... it seemed vaguely plausible. Anyway, ugh to most all of this.


So many problems, even outside the TRAFFIC JAM. Misspelled ERIK ("C"). Misspelled RAMSAY. ("E"). No idea about this MALL (54D: The world's largest one is in Chengdu, China (covering 18 million square feet)). You couldn't invent a worse SHANE clue for me if you tried. Just ???? (65A: One of the McMahons of WWE). Wow KANS is bad. The attempt to untie ALEXA and AMS via "alarms" was painful (27D: One setting an alarm, maybe + 29D: Alarm clock settings, for short). Impossible for me to get from clue to MUTT (I had OLIO) (4D: A little of this, a little of that). Had HOOPS before HORSE (68A: Basketball game). Thought the anchor was on a *SWIM*TEAM (50A: Group working with an anchor) (NEWSTEAM). I'm looking this grid over and seeing no answers I truly liked. Zero. I like that RE(BUS) actually contains a rebus square, that's kinda cute. But DETS no EEKS no ... so much generic fill, and nothing exciting or even semi-splashy.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Danish tourist attraction since 1968 / SUN 3-29-20 / Title for many a W.H. aspirant / Nintendo character with green cap / Whistle-blower in 2013 news / Mount much hiked peak in Yosemite / Golden Flashes of Mid-American Conference

Constructor: Ricky Cruz

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (the clues just seemed hard a lot of the time, not sure why) (11:39)

Ugh, this puzzle has notes that are so complicated, but if you do it in app / on paper, you maybe don't need notes because your grid looks like this:

image courtesy of Jake Goldstein

THEME: "Keep the Change" — looks like the idea is that there are two nearly identical 5x5 blocks in the middle of the grid, with the only difference being five squares that spell out BLACK in the left block v. five squares that spell out WHITE in the right block. What "black" and "white" have to do with anything, or why the words BLACK and WHITE are unchecked on either side of the grid, I have zero idea. There are two theme-related answers:

Theme answers:

• TELL LEFT FROM RIGHT (26A: Make heads or tails of a situation ... or an alternative title for this puzzle)
• SPOT THE DIFFERENCE (110A: Kind of visual puzzle ... or what to do with each line in this puzzle's two shaded areas)

Word of the Day: DISTURBIA (3D: 2007 Shia LaBeouf thriller or a 2008 #1 hit by Rihanna) —

Disturbia is a 2007 American thriller film directed by D. J. Caruso, written by Christopher Landon and Carl Ellsworth and stars Shia LaBeouf, David Morse, Sarah Roemer and Carrie-Anne Moss. The film follows a teenager who is placed on house arrest for assault and begins to spy on his neighbors, believing one of them is a possible serial killer. (wikipedia) // "Disturbia" is a song recorded by Barbadian singer Rihanna for Good Girl Gone Bad: Reloaded (2008), a re-release of her third studio album Good Girl Gone Bad (2007). It was written by Andre Merritt, Chris Brown, Brian Kennedy and Rob. A!, with production of the song helmed by Kennedy. The song was released as the third single from the reloaded edition of the album, and seventh overall. "Disturbia" was sent to US Contemporary hit radio on June 17, 2008, and was released as a CD single in the United Kingdom on July 22, 2008. (wikipedia)

• • •

This was a drag from the second I opened the file. There were puzzle notes, and I thought fine, I'll read them, but they were soooo long and tedious that I just ignored them and solved without understanding what I was supposed to be seeing. This is because in my software, there were no shaded squares. Black Ink (which I love) still can do only black or white squares, I guess, so that's how I solved this thing. Eventually the circles that spelled BLACK and WHITE filled themselves in, and so it was easy enough to write BLACK and WHITE in the spaces along the edge of the grid, but ... why? I read the two long themers and their clues: still no idea. I looked at the circles and thought, "well, yes, the one on the left is different from the one on the right, and yes, I can SPOT THE DIFFERENCE ... what is the point of any of this?" Finally I went back and read the puzzle notes and painstakingly recreated the two sets of 5x5 shaded squares and noticed that both shaded areas are exactly identical, throughout the whole 5x5 region, *except* for the letters that make up BLACK and WHITE, respectively. Ok, but, so ... why? There's just a huge W H Y? hovering over this whole enterprise. I kept thinking "what is the metaphor? Chess? Backgammon? Surely I'm supposed to see ... something. The whole kids' placemat puzzle conceit ... that can't be it—those are never BLACK and WHITE, have nothing to do with BLACK and WHITE ... [exasperated sigh]." And it's all so condescending: can I SPOT THE DIFFERENCE? Well, yeah, you Circled The Letters That Are Different, so ... I do indeed "spot" that, yes. Yes. I have no idea what any of that has to do with telling my left from my right (which, in its phrasing here, feels awkward—without the personal pronouns, i.e. my left, my right, or her left, her right, etc., the phrase feels strange). And, as I've said, the isolation of BLACK and WHITE on the grid's edges also makes no sense to me. It's a fussy gimmicky puzzle with no payoff. Please don't make these.


If I just ignore the theme, then there are some nice parts to this. BONESAW is slightly gruesome, but SPONGEBOB is cute, CUTTING EDGE is edgy (cliché in real life, but somehow nifty in the grid). REAL DEAL and LEGOLAND are pretty flash as well (though LEGOLAND took me So Long to get, as there are LEGOLANDs all over, including the one I went to near San Diego, so if the "Danish" part was supposed to tip me off, well, it did not). I think of AWS as cries of cuteness, not [Cries of disappointment]. GET OFF A SHOT ... get a shot off ... not sure where I fall on the phrasing there. I guess it's fine. It's an unusual answer, at any rate, so that's good. I had some trouble in the area between the two shaded areas, especially with LEXEMES (65A: Units in linguistics). I came at that answer from the back and it just seemed like there were a Lot of potential [Units in linguistics] that end with -EMES. Graphemes? Phonemes? Morphemes? I guess none of those fit, but the fact that I could think of three very quickly made me not at all confident of anything I might put in there. Also, instead of NIX and ACE I wanted AXE and PRO, so things were quite messy through the middle for a bit. I like the expression NO DICE. I use it. Feels slightly olde-timey, but not in an overly quaint or affected way. Or maybe I am quite quaint and affected and just living in denial. That's fine. Denial is truly my preferred residence at the moment.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. some users have been getting "this site might be dangerous" warnings from their browsers when trying to access my site. My site is definitely not dangerous; I'm working to see if there's anything to be done on my end, but in the meantime, if you use are a Comcast/Xfinity user, try turning your "Safe Browse" setting to "Off"—here's how. This is the one thing that I know worked for at least one user. Anyway, there are no safety issues, only miscommunication issues between browsers and my site. If the problem is on my end (in part or in full), it will get fixed shortly. Turns out I have some helpful readers who know how to do computer things! Anyway, thank you for your patience!

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Surrealist Maar / WED 3-18-20 / Singer Luis with 13x platinum hit Despacito / Introductory scene in some rom-coms

Constructor: Ricky Cruz

Relative difficulty: Easy (untimed, clipboard solve)

THEME: -FUL-ful — familiar two-word phrases have -FUL added to the end of the first word, creating wacky phrases, clued wackily (i.e. "?"-style):

Theme answers:

• PLAYFUL DEAD (17A: Zombies with a sense of humor?)
• CAREFUL BEARS (29A: Grizzlies that don't fall for traps?)
• TASTEFUL TEST (45A: Exam in an interior design class?)
• AWFUL SHUCKS (60A: Terrible attempts at peeling corn?)

Word of the Day: "Despacito" (49A: Singer Luis with the 13x platinum hit "Despacito") —

"Despacito" (American Spanish: [despa'sito]; transl. "Slowly") is a song by Puerto Rican singer Luis Fonsi featuring Puerto Rican rapper Daddy Yankee from Fonsi's 2019 studio album Vida. On January 12, 2017, Universal Music Latin released "Despacito" and its music video, which shows both artists performing the song in La Perla neighborhood of Old San Juan, Puerto Rico and the local bar La Factoría. The song was written by Fonsi, Erika Ender, and Daddy Yankee, and was produced by Mauricio Rengifo and Andrés Torres. A remix version featuring Canadian singer Justin Bieber was released on April 17, 2017, which helped to improve the song's chart performance in numerous countries, including various number-one positions. "Despacito" has been widely credited by music journalists as being instrumental in popularizing Spanish-language pop music in the mainstream market again. The worldwide increase of Latin pop music consumption from 2017 onwards has been referred to as "the 'Despacito' effect." (wikipedia) (DESPACITOEFFECT (15))

• • •

When I figured out the theme (after the second answer) my first thought was "this is a pretty thin concept ... I should not be liking this as much as I am." I mean, just adding "-FUL" to the back ends of words is very basic, as theme ideas go, and since there are lots of words that might be susceptible to this kind of alteration gimmick (mind, gain, pride, law, dread—DREADFUL LOCKS!), the whole enterprise risks seeming flimsy, the themers arbitrary. But ... I dunno, I think they work fine, and I actually think the last one, AWFUL SHUCKS, is legitimately funny. And since the fill is most solid and occasionally excellent, I largely enjoyed myself today. It took me until the second themer to understand what the theme was all about because when I got the first themer, PLAYFUL DEAD, I thought it was a pun on Grateful Dead. Not a particularly good pun, but ... I was intrigued to see where it was going. Then it ended up just going to -FUL -FUL- -FUL -FUL. But somehow that ended up being enough for a pleasant Wednesday experience.


I have two notes on this puzzle. One is that cluing TOOT as [Spree] and ORATE as [Deliver a stemwinder] feels very, very Shortz-voice. Quaintish. Olden. I'd be surprised if these clues were Ricky's. They aren't bad clues. They just ... have a vibe about them that seems yesteryearish. Like the voice of puzzle when I started solving in the '90s. I don't think I've ever seen the word "stemwinder" outside of crossword clues for ORATE. And when I got the "T" at 21A: Spree, the only thing I wanted was TEAR. In fact, I wrote in TEAR. That was the only mistake I made today, and the only real bit of non-theme resistance besides FONSI—once again, for the second day in a row, the only resistance the puzzle offers up comes in the form of a single proper name (yesterday, same thing happened with CECELIA). "Despacito" was a musical phenomenon that I was very much aware of, but ... I was aware of the song name only. Really seems like the song title became world famous, while the *singer's* name ... well, probably also became world famous, just a little less so. FONSI seems like it might be a pretty grid-friendly name. When you have a 13x-platinum hit (!) ... well, that kind of success gives you a certain amount of gridworthiness, at least for a while. I expect to see FONSI again, or (maybe on a Fri or Sat) to see LUIS clued this way. And, perhaps more obviously, look for "DESPACITO" to come your way, eventually.


Some great answers in here today, particularly MEET-CUTE (8D: Introductory scene in some rom-coms), which I can't believe hasn't been in the NYTXW before. The other long Downs were sufficiently lively (have you tried the PAN-SEARED FRUIT FLY? mwah, delicious), and the short stuff mostly held up—which is good, because there's a lot of it in this 78-worder. I like that the grid made room for six Downs of 7+-letter length, and then made the most of those answers (they're all rock-solid). All in all, a pleasant walk in the park. Very much the mood I seek right now. Take care, everyone.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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