2019 film co-starring Taylor Swift as Bombalurina / FRI 10-30-26 / Hindu god with three eyes / Monitors for accuracy, just because / Cover-up in an old detective film? / Macronutrient group? / Tony-winning actress Stroker / Cordless heaters that you might order cords for? / Result of keeping a lid on too long / Trees whose nuts and leaves are toxic to humans / Classic potluck dish

Constructor: Robyn Weintraub and Rafael Musa

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: mirepoix (30A: Like the ingredients in a French chef's mirepoix) —

A mirepoix (/mɪərˈpwɑː/ meer-PWAH, French: [miʁ.pwa]) is a mixture of diced vegetables cooked with fat (usually butter) for a long time on low heat without colouring or browning. The ingredients are not sautéed or otherwise hard-cooked, because the intention is to sweeten rather than caramelise them. Historically including various meats before settling at its current meaning as a vegetable base, mirepoix is a long-standing part of French cuisine and is the flavour base for a wide variety of dishes, including stocks, soups, stews, and sauces.

When the mirepoix is not precooked, the constituent vegetables may be cut to a larger size, depending on the overall cooking time for the dish. Usually the vegetable mixture is onions, carrots, and celery (either common 'Pascal' celery or celeriac), with the traditional ratio being 2:1:1—two parts onion, one part carrot, and one part celery.^[1][2] Further cooking, with the addition of tomato purée, creates a darkened brown mixture called pinçage. (wikipedia

• • •

Easy and beautiful with whoosh-whoosh and zoom-zoom galore. Coming out of the NW, however, I was not at all certain that this would be my experience. It's a throwaway corner, true, but it definitely felt thrown away, with overly common and vowely AERO EON and esp. AEIOU all in a tiny amount of space. I'm almost certain I've seen that exact AEIOU clue before, too (2D: Macronutrient group?) (yes ... [Macronutrient grouping?] appeared in 2024). So I had this moment of "What Is Happening!?" but then came the cavalry—a cavalcade of fresh long answer after fresh long answer, with frequently SASsy clues and very little to make you (me) wince the rest of the way. That NW corner ended up feeling like the slow climb up a rollercoaster arc before you're sent careening down the other side, or like a catapult being pulled back before it sends you hurtling through space. I mean, when a guy in a TRENCHCOAT shows up, I know things are about to get good (3D: Cover-up in an old detective film?). That guy is probably gonna be hard to KEEP(S) HONEST; he's probably gonna BEND THE RULES a little, but you hired him for a reason—he gets the job done. He's as comfortable in DONUT SHOPS (47A: "Hole-sale" outlets?) as he is in HOTEL SUITEs as he is on the SEASHORE(S), and somehow always manages to look ruggedly handsome—his fedora doesn't even give him HAT HEAD (40A: Result of keeping a lid on too long). So don't worry—no matter who he HURTS, not matter how many people IN POWER he has to ruffle, he'll find your stolen PAPERS. In fact, he'll probably find them so fast you'll be saying "BACK SO SOON?" (you know, when he drives back to your mansion, where you hired him in the first place) (21A: "Didn't we just say goodbye?"). In short, this was the best hardboiled detective story I've read all year. Also a good puzzle. The longer answers aren't always flashy, but they are smooth and familiar and charming and they were mostly clued in a playfully Friday way. It was over too quickly, but it was very enjoyable.

["All the cops in the DONUT SHOPS say..."]

One other very noticeable, and largely welcome, aspect of this puzzle is how little it leaned on names and popular culture. It's a very accessible puzzle that way, with a wide range of answers and no obvious generational bias—though it does lean a little bit into the contemporary musical environment with a Billie Eilish song and a Wicked song and a much-maligned feline musical remake. I went from "how should I know..." to "omg it's CATS!" pretty quickly there at 1A: 2019 film co-starring Taylor Swift as Bombalurina. Surprised she'd want a role that had both "bomb" and most of "urine" in it, but she's an artist, you never know what era she'll be in next! My greatest pop cultural success today was pulling ALI Stroker's name from ... god knows where (35A: Tony-winning actress Stroker). I think there's a bucket of ALIs in my head and she is one of them. There's an ALY in there too that I sometimes grab by mistake (that ALY is [Gymnast Raisman], btw). So apparently you can in fact build new crosswordese reflexes later in life. I saw "Stroker" and my brain immediately went "That's ALI" and I said "wait, how do you kn-?" and my brain was like "just write it in and keep going. You'll see." And damned if he wasn't right. ALI Stroker won her Tony for her performance in the 2019 revival of Oklahoma!:

Alyson Mackenzie Stroker (born June 16, 1987) is an American actress, author and singer. She is the first actor who uses a wheelchair to appear on a Broadway stage, and also the first to be nominated for and win a Tony Award. Stroker was a finalist on the second season of The Glee Project in 2012 and later appeared as a guest star on Glee in 2013. She played Anna in Deaf West Theatre's 2015 revival of Spring Awakening and won the 2019 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for her performance in Oklahoma!.

Bullets:

• 18A: Aid in evaluating some calls (SLOW MOTION) — "calls" made by referees or umpires
• 9D: They're at least 170 times hotter than Tabasco sauce (GHOST PEPPERS) — the Halloween vibes continue this week...

• 10D: Common fix for a problem? (AUTOCORRECT) — I don't get what the clue is doing. It just seems literal to me, so I don't know why there's a "?" on it. Oh ... LOL OK ... you got me, puzzle. I'm just now realizing that I have been mentally AUTOCORRECTing that clue this whole time. It's not [Common fix for a problem?]—it's [Common fix for a prolbem?], with "problem" misspelled. I finished this puzzle over an hour ago and it's still paying surprise dividends!
• 13D: Grp. of nine, divided in three? (SSN) — XXX-XX-XXXX. Three parts, not three equal parts.
• 27D: Cordless heaters that you might order cords for? (WOOD STOVES) — in case corny humor is not really your thing, here's some cordy humor for you. A "cord" is a unit of volume for stacked wood measuring 4 ft x 8 ft x 4 ft. 

• 48D: Eponym of the company that marketed the first escalator (OTIS) — man that guy really liked to go up and down, didn't he? (longtime solvers know OTIS well as the elevator guy) (actually, Elisha Otis himself (1811-61) was long dead before his eponymous company marketed the first escalator (1899)).

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

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Network debut of 1981 / FRI 9-11-26 / ___ Ann (classic Lily Tomlin character) / U.S. senators Warnock and Duckworth, for two / Film composer Silvestri / Chip source, informally / Jazz Age Disney princess / Guard at the gates of Mordor / Blue ___ (coral reef swimmers like Pixar's Dory) / Assessment of something enjoyed ironically

Constructor: Robyn Weintraub

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: ALAN Silvestri (46D: Film composer Silvestri) —

Alan Anthony Silvestri (born March 26, 1950) is an American composer, conductor, orchestrator and music producer of film scores. He has received two Grammy Awards and two Primetime Emmy Awards as well as nominations for two Academy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards.

He has been associated with director Robert Zemeckis since 1984, composing music for nearly all of his feature films, including the Back to the Future film series (1985–1990), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), Death Becomes Her (1992), Forrest Gump (1994), Contact (1997), What Lies Beneath (2000), Cast Away (2000), The Polar Express (2004), Beowulf (2007), Flight (2012) and The Walk (2015).

Silvestri also scored many other popular movies, including Predator (1987), The Abyss (1989), Father of the Bride (1991), The Bodyguard (1992), Eraser (1996), The Parent Trap (1998), Practical Magic (1998), Stuart Little (1999), The Mummy Returns (2001), Lilo & Stitch (2002), Van Helsing (2004), the first three Night at the Museum films, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (2009), The A-Team (2010), Ready Player One (2018), and five Marvel Cinematic Universe films: Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), The Avengers (2012), Avengers: Infinity War (2018), Avengers: Endgame (2019) and Avengers: Doomsday (2026). (wikipedia)

• • •

[God-tier candy] 

On most days, after I've fed the cats and gotten some water, I come up here to my office, open the puzzle up, and start stumbling along with my solving without (initially) looking down to see who the constructor is. I don't know how I developed this habit, but I've usually had a stab at the NW corner, at least, before I glance down to see who made the damn puzzle. Sometimes I look down with appreciation, sometimes I look down with anger. Well, disappointment, anyway. So it was very funny (to me) today when I worked my way through the SKA-not-RUM and the "oh that kind of 'anchor'" (DESK) and "omg what was that Lily Tomlin character's name!?!?"-ness of the NW and then hit the first whoosh! (OSCAR PARTY), and then, midway through writing in the second whoosh! ("GENIUS IDEA!") I literally thought "Is this Robyn? This feels like Robyn," looked down, and lol, whaddya know! I love that "GENIUS IDEA!" is the answer that gave it away. Sorry to predictably love another RW joint but she's just on another level and you (I) can feel it. Twelve (12) marquee answers, at least eleven of which are good, and at least half a dozen of which are "hell yeah" good. There's such great voice here. Slanginess, colloquialness, but most of it not at all niche or obscure or strangely worded or otherwise irksome. Just stuff you hear all the time but don't necessarily expect to see in a crossword. "GENIUS IDEA!" "THAT DOES IT!" "PLEASE DON'T GO!" SO BAD IT'S GOOD. Even something as simple as "LET ME KNOW" really sings when it's in a clean grid alongside all these other winners. Someone should solve this in GLITTER PEN, because it deserves it (not sure if that would be legible, but who cares: sparkly pen for a sparkly puzzle!)

Though the puzzle played pretty easy overall (those whooshes really did their job, whooshing me from one section to the next), I did spin my wheels and make a mistake or two, here and there. As I said (above, re: SKA, DESK, EDITH), getting off the ground involved a little effort, and then after a lot of whooshing, on the other side of the grid, after correcting GLITTER GUN to GLITTER PEN (had the GLIT- in place, missed the "prose" part of the clue), I hit 43A: Comforts, and off the "SO-" I wrote in .... SOLACES. Then off that "S" (the second one), I looked at 44D: Lavender or lilac and wrote in SHADE. Wrong-wrong combo! That's never good. I was lucky that my wrong answers absolutely ground me to a halt—wouldn't work with any crosses whatsoever—so I pulled myself out of that mess reasonably quickly, starting with the obvious SEEN (54A: How one might feel at a support group meeting), which changed SHADE to SCENT. The "T" from HASN'T eventually killed SOLACES and got me to SOOTHES, and then I was back on track. 

After fixing SOLACES / SHADE, everything went fine until the very end—the hardest part of the grid, for me—the far north. Three little answers would not allow me to move from the NW into the N. The real killer was PHDS (20A: U.S. senators Warnock and Duckworth, for two). PALS!? No idea. That "H" in PHDS stayed a mystery because ITCHED (5D: Had a hankering?)? No idea! I ITCHED for several days last week but that's because I got triple-stung by a wasp, not because I had a hankering. The fact that the clue on nearby EARS (7D: Sound wave amplifiers) was also inscrutable to me meant that I was essentially in an "Access Denied" situation vis-a-vis the NE, so I ended up having to come at it from the other side, up from below. Luckily, not that hard. Big "D'oh!" when P-DS ended up being PHDS. Tough (for me), but fair. The "U.S." in the clue does fairly signal that the answer will be an abbr. Fridays should involve at least a little struggle. Not enough struggle to make this anything but "Easy," but still, enough crunch to keep the puzzle from being boring-easy.

Bullets:

• 19A: Singer/actress Carrere (TIA) — a name I associate almost exclusively with Wayne's World (1992) but I just looked her up and she has worked constantly in both film and television for the past three decades. Plus she won two Grammys for Best Hawaiian Music Album (!!). TIA is usually clued as Spanish for "aunt," or via the coffee liqueur TIA Maria, but every five years or so, you get Ms. Carrere (her last name has also appeared in the NYTXW, three times, though her full name, never).

• 31A: Drives for money? (TELETHON) — had me wondering if there was such a thing as a GOLF(A)THON.
• 45A: Fairly low-risk investment (AA BOND) — by far my least favorite thing in the grid. Let us not speak of it again.
• 29D: Trial that an attorney may not remember fondly? (LSAT) — don't really get this. I mean, you're an attorney. It's just a reading comprehension and logic test. You must've done OK.  Isn't the bar the really grueling "trial"?
• 31D: Blue ___ (coral reef swimmers like Pixar's Dory) (TANGS) — I never knew "tang" was a fish until I started seeing TANG clued that way in puzzles (which the NYTXW didn't do until 2024!?). 
• 49A: Guard at the gates of Mordor (ORC) — ENTs are good and Mordor is bad so I went with the other three-letter creature from LOTR. A note for those who are occasionally confused: ENDOR is the forest moon where the Ewoks live (Star Wars); MORDOR is the realm of the dark lord Sauron (Lord of the Rings). Hope this helps.

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

[all proceeds go to WFMU, the best listener-supported radio in the whole dang world]

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. a little Paul Simon for you today ... just because ❤️

  

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British rowhouses / FRI 1-30-26 / Small branch of Marvel Comics? / Jalapeño topper / Call ahead, in a way / Mylar alternative / Switch to a shorter line, say / Leader of China? / Group of Alpha males? / Piedmont province with a namesake wine / Brand whose logo has an A-shaped caliper / Capture a moment, in fiction / Chaney of classic horror / Elicit the facepalm emoji, say

Constructor: Robyn Weintraub

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: MEWS (31D: British rowhouses) —

A mews is a row or courtyard of stables and carriage houses with living quarters above them, built behind large city houses before motor vehicles replaced horses in the early twentieth century. Mews are usually located in desirable residential areas, having been built to cater for the horses, coachmen and stable-servants of prosperous residents.

The word mews comes from the Royal Mews in London, England, a set of royal stables built 500 years ago on a former royal hawk mews. The term is now commonly used in English-speaking countries for city housing of a similar design. [...] Mews derives from the French muer, 'to moult', reflecting its original function to confine a hawk to a mews while it moulted. William Shakespeare deploys to mew up to mean confine, coop up, or shut up in The Taming of the Shrew: "What, will you mew her up, Signor Baptista?" and also Richard III: "This day should Clarence closely be mewed up".

The term mews is still used today in falconry circles in English-speaking countries to refer to the housing of the birds of prey used in falconry. (wikipedia)

• • •

There it is. There's the Friday puzzle I've been missing, craving, chasing. The one that explodes in bursts of whooshes and zooms but somehow also manages not to be insultingly easy. Choked with marquee answers—really worthy marquee answers. When I say "worthy," that doesn't mean they are all precisely to my tastes—I'd be happy never seeing another Marvel character in my grid again, so BABY GROOT didn't exactly thrill me (33A: Small branch of Marvel Comics?), but even as I entered it in, I thought "that's a pretty good answer for someone who likes that sort of thing" (I had "BABY" and started scrolling through the Marvel hero roster wondering which one they were babifying now: BABY SPIDER-MAN? BABY BLACK PANTHER? BABY THOR!? Then I remembered Groot—the Marvel equivalent of an ENT, i.e. a tree creature (or in the case of BABY GROOT, a little "branch" creature)—and remembered that I had, in fact, seen a BABY GROOT ... somewhere. Comics? Movies? Don't remember). As for the other long answers: yee haw. T-MINUS ZERO got me started, though clunkily, as that exact phrase somehow isn't a top-of-the-brain, rolls-off-the-tongue countdown phrase for me, but after that? The puzzle burst open: "CHECK PLEASE!" GHOST STORIES! GOES BERSERK! and on and on, spiraling through the (SPIRAL) GALAXY. Fourteen (14!) answers of 8 or more letters in length, all of them solid, many of them great. I particularly love the pairing in the SW corner: it's like the puzzle is speaking directly to me, giving advice on how to survive life in an increasingly fascist country that is dedicated to harming its own people (via secret police or infectious diseases, take your pick): "FACE REALITY!" (tough!). "REMAIN CALM!" (tougher!). Good advice! I'll try!

The difficulty for me today was entirely in the short stuff. Luckily, the short stuff is mostly not ugly stuff, so I didn't mind the fight (I do resent fighting for what is ultimately a cruddy answer). Trouble with the short stuff started early, in NW, with both RADIO (2D: Call ahead, in a way) and EDIT (17A: Switch to a shorter line, say). In neither case was I imagining the correct context. I might "call ahead," but I would never RADIO anyone, as I am not a cop checking in with headquarters (or whoever else "radios" on a regular basis. Cabbies? Military personnel?). And the clue on EDIT had me thinking of checkout lines, obviously. I forgot that [British rowhouses] were called MEWS (at M-WS I actually thought "MOWS?"). A LOT was hardish to get to via 32D: Every day, say. And it went on like this, with the clues to the answers testing me, and then the long answers thrilling me. FRAT came as a total surprise (46D: Group of Alpha males?)—is there a FRAT that's abbreviated "Alpha"? I guess the Greek letter alone was supposed to tip me. I had NOTES before TONES (57A: Steps on a scale), which kept that FRAT corner tough. Without a "?" on [Jalapeño topper], the fact that it was a "letteral" clue (referring specifically to the TILDE on the letter Ñ) never occurred to me. In that same section, I wanted SINO- before INDO- (55A: Leader of China?). As for "DEEP," no way (58A: "Whoa ... that's too much for my brain to handle!"). No hope. I don't think the clue is very good. How do I know something's "DEEP" if it's "too much for my brain to handle"? Makes no sense. If my brain can't handle it, maybe it's just "CONFUSING" or "WRONG." Or maybe it's shallow and I'm just "STUPID." Is the tone of "DEEP" facetious? Mocking? Again, without crucial context, this clue did nothing for me. But it's the only toughish clue that I ended up booing at. The rest all seemed fair and fine.

Bullets:

• 5A: Piedmont province with a namesake wine (ASTI) — "Piedmont" = "wine" = four letters = ASTI. Reflex answer.
• 24A: It's -90º at the South Pole: Abbr. (LAT.) — yes I wrote in LOW and no I will not be taking any questions at this time.
• 36A: Brand whose logo has an A-shaped caliper (ACURA) — I never really thought about that logo as looking like anything in particular, but of course it's a caliper. Maybe if I worked with calipers more often (i.e. at all), that fact would've registered.

• 39A: Mylar alternative (LATEX) — again, need context! Looks like maybe ... balloons? Probably other stuff too, but there are definitely both LATEX and mylar balloons.
• 40A: Capture a moment, in fiction (STOP TIME) — "in fiction?" You "capture a moment" by ... depicting it. That's all fiction is. I don't really know what this clue is referring to, specifically. STOP-TIME is also a term from the jazz world: "a technique or effect in which the rhythm section stops playing for one or more beats each measure, usually for a chorus, while a soloist continues to play" (Collins). It's also the name of this song.

• 6D: Eggshell, for one (SHEEN) — another short one that flummoxed me. I knew it was a COLOR or a HUE, a SHADE of, say, stocking, but SHEEN, you got me there. I guess we're talking about paint.

• 28D: Florida setting for "The Birdcage" (SOUTH BEACH) — me: "ooh, I know this." me also: [writes in SOUTH MIAMI]. 

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Malaysian state or island / FRI 5-2-25 / Bams, cracks or dots, in mahjong / Literary bird with a one-word vocabulary, apparently / Much of northern Arkansas / Sides of circles? / Titular female Disney character whose name also appears in a Shakespeare play / Sunfish feature / Lincoln Center's former ___ Fisher Hall

Constructor: Robyn Weintraub

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: PENANG (45A: Malaysian state or island) —

Penang is a Malaysian state located on the northwest coast of Peninsular Malaysia along the Strait of Malacca. It has two parts: Penang Island, where the capital city, George Town, is located, and Seberang Perai on the Malay Peninsula. These two halves are physically connected by the Penang Bridge and the Second Penang Bridge. The state shares borders with Kedah to the north and east, and Perak to the south.

Penang is one of Malaysia's most developed economic powerhouses, with the highest GDP per capita and Human Development Index of all states. It also ranks second among the states in terms of average wages. Penang is Malaysia's leading exporter with over RM447 billion (US$108.94 billion) in exports in 2023, primarily through the Penang International Airport which is also the nation's second busiest by aircraft movements. [...] 

With 1.74 million residents and a population density of 1,659/km² (4,300/sq mi) as of 2020, Penang is one of Malaysia's most densely populated and urbanised states. Seberang Perai is Malaysia's third largest city by population. Penang is culturally diverse with a population that includes Chinese, Malays, Indians, Eurasians, Siamese and expatriates. (wikipedia) 

• • •

This puzzle had many of the things I have come to expect from a Robyn Weintraub Friday puzzle, but also a couple things I have come not to expect—namely, obscure (or at least totally unknown-to-me) proper nouns. I am vaguely familiar with the existence of the musical "Hello, Dolly," but where LEVI factors in, I have no idea. Is that her last name? Dolly LEVI? Oh yeah, looks like. Dolly Gallagher LEVI. I've seen LEVI in the puzzle a million different ways, but if I ever saw it this way, I forgot it, for sure (16A: Dolly of "Hello, Dolly!"). So LEVI per se, not obscure, but as clued, yeesh. Needed most of the crosses. Then there's PENANG, which ... well, ya got me. I am familiar with PANANG curry, but I'm pretty sure that's spelled the way I just spelled it (turns out it's spelled many ways in English, but yes, PANANG is one of them, and PENANG ... isn't). I confess I know next to nothing about Malaysia. PENANG is home to the country's second-most populous city (George Town), but off the top of my head I couldn't name Malaysia's *first*-most populous city (it's Kuala Lumpur, which, unlike George Town (and PENANG), I've heard of and should've known, my bad). In the days before I started solving, the NYTXW used to be virtually awash in PENANG. It made 20 of its 24 total appearances before I was ever born, and last appeared in a grid in 1993. In fact, this is the first appearance of PENANG in the Modern (Shortz) Era. The island probably had WWII importance, which gave it some lasting post-war cultural relevance. But by the '70s its appearances waned, and even Maleska (Shortz's notoriously obscure geography-hungry predecessor) only used it twice, late in his career (side note: the last two people to use PENANG in a puzzle were named Patterson Pepple (1991) and Tap Osborn (1993), which are some great names. Annnnyway, huge "what the!?" at PENANG. And now, after a little research, I know why. Back to my initial point, or one of them: I don't normally have to hunt geographical obscurities when I'm finished solving one of Robyn's puzzles. I think the fact that PENANG is throwing me so bad today is testament to how high my expectations are for smoothness and general familiarity when it comes to Robyn's puzzles.

But as I said up top, in addition to the unexpected (namely, the proper noun mysteries), there was the very-much-expected—that is, the delightful longer colloquial phrases zinging across the grid. "THINK IT OVER," "HOW CAN I RESIST?," "YOU GET THE IDEA" ... you get the idea: all the hallmark Weintraub pizzazz and loveliness, AS EXPECTED. The grid had a light touch. It felt airy (complimentary) and breezy and I zoom-zoomed through it with (mostly) great pleasure. Again, PENANG doesn't stand out *nearly* so much if it doesn't represent a fairly bumpy departure from the creamy norm. The grid felt maybe a little heavy on the short crosswordy stuff (ARNO OLIN ERG CHE ATON IDES ILSA etc.), but never in a way that felt abusive or lazy. 

Outside of PENANG, and to a lesser extent, LEVI, I had only minor trouble today. I could not make heads or tails of the HALF clue at first (25D: One of two for one). I am doing so many cryptic crosswords these days that I just looked at the clue and started thinking about it on a very literal basis, i.e. "what does the word 'one' have two of? Uh ... vowels?" No no no. I mean, yes, it has two vowels, but no, that is not relevant here. But yes, any one thing, cut in half, has two ... halves? I guess you can't really argue with that. I also didn't find "Well, THEN ..." intuitive.  Or, I found it too intuitive—so ordinary that I couldn't believe it was being passed off as a standalone phrase. In funnier struggles, I put [Much of northern Arkansas] in the AZORES for a second or two (which is what happens when your internal Pattern Recognition Software fails at speed). I also had a ROBIN (Robyn!) as the one-word bird ("tweedly deedily dee [short birdsong], tweedly deedily dee, tweedly deedily dee, [short birdsong]" etc.) instead of Poe's RAVEN ("Nevermore!") (38A: Literary bird with a one-word vocabulary, apparently). 

Bullets:

• 17A: Sides of circles? (ONION RINGS) — never saw the clue. I solve short stuff first and then look at clues for longer answers ... but I must've had most of ONION RINGS already filled in and didn't even bother? Or maybe I did, and just saw the word "sides" and that was enough? It all happened so fast. 
• 29A: Titular female Disney character whose name also appears in a Shakespeare play (ARIEL) / 30A: Titular male Shakespeare character whose name also appears in a Disney film (TIMON) — so that's The Little Mermaid and The Tempest for ARIEL, and TIMON of Athens and The Lion King for TIMON. You know, I've never seen The Lion King. I stopped seeing that first new wave of Disney films right after Aladdin, I think. TIMON is the meerkat who is best friends with Pumbaa, the warthog.

• 36A: Sunfish feature (SAIL) — oh this was slightly toughish for me too. No idea that a sunfish was a type of sailboat. Even after I got the answer, I assumed that SAIL was just a name for the actual sunfish's rather large fin...

• 12D: Lincoln Center's former ___ Fisher Hall (AVERY) — familiarish, but ... why would you put a "former" hall in the puzzle? What happened to the hall? ... [Looks it up] ... Ah, I see. It's still there. But ... looks like the Yale School of Drama isn't the only thing David Geffen has managed to plaster his name on. 
• 24D: Concrete example of rotational forces and fluid dynamics? (CEMENT MIXER) — the five-year-old in me loves seeing a CEMENT MIXER. He doesn't so much love the clue, but vroom vroom, chug chug, spin spin, CEMENT MIXER, fun. Reminds me of reading Richard Scarry books as a kid. So many great vehicles in there...

• 46D: Super Monkey Ball brand (SEGA) — again, no idea. Way more "no idea"s than I'm used to in a Weintraub Friday, but SEGA is such a familiar game brand that I didn't get held up too much here. 
• 36D: Bams, cracks or dots, in mahjong (SUITS) — did not know this, but guessed it immediately, and thank god, or else I'd still be dealing with the sunfish's TAIL.

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

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