Dissolute man, from the French / TUE 12-6-22 / Bellicose humanoid of Middle Earth / "Girl in Progress" star with a line of cosmetics / Portrayer of the nurse Marta Cabrera in "Knives Out"

Constructor: Ross Trudeau and Wyna Liu

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: Crossword Lady Ladder — it's basically a word ladder, where one letter changes at each "rung", only here the "word" that's changing is a three-letter woman's first name. Because of their vowel-consonant-vowel structure and short length, the first names that make up the ladder tend to appear in crosswords a lot:

Theme answers:

• INA GARTEN (18A: The Food Network's "Barefoot Contessa")
• IDA B. WELLS (22A: Civil rights leader who co-founded the N.A.A.C.P.)
• ADA LOVELACE (29A: Mathematician regarded as the first computer programmer)
• ANA DE ARMAS (35A: Portrayer of the nurse Marta Cabrera in "Knives Out")
• AVA DUVERNAY (47A: Director of the miniseries "When They See Us")
• EVA MENDES (54A: "Girl in Progress" star with a line of cosmetics)
• EVE ENSLER (59A: "The Vagina Monologues" playwright)

Word of the Day: IDA B. WELLS (22A) —

Ida B. Wells (full name: Ida Bell Wells-Barnett) (July 16, 1862 – March 25, 1931) was an American investigative journalist, educator, and early leader in the civil rights movement. She was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Wells dedicated her lifetime to combating prejudice and violence, the fight for African-American equality, especially that of women, and became arguably the most famous Black woman in the United States of her time. [...] In the 1890s, Wells documented lynching in the United States in articles and through her pamphlets called Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in all its Phases, and The Red Record, investigating frequent claims of whites that lynchings were reserved for Black criminals only. Wells exposed lynching as a barbaric practice of whites in the South used to intimidate and oppress African Americans who created economic and political competition—and a subsequent threat of loss of power—for whites. A white mob destroyed her newspaper office and presses as her investigative reporting was carried nationally in Black-owned newspapers. Subjected to continued threats, Wells left Memphis for Chicago. She married Ferdinand L. Barnett in 1895 and had a family while continuing her work writing, speaking, and organizing for civil rights and the women's movement for the rest of her life. (wikipedia)

• • •

Sam Spade consoles Iva Archer on her
exclusion from this puzzle

On the one hand, there's a weird whimsy to this theme that I kinda like. I mean, it's fun to say their first names in quick succession, and there's a kind of insidery winky thing going on where the puzzle is showing you All The Same Names It Always Shows You, Every Day, but this time the names are in a carefully curated and crafted arrangement. It's a crosswordese parade, or maybe a crosswordese flash mob—same old faces, only suddenly there's a dance routine and everyone is moving in precise order. Plus, they've got fancy dress on (i.e. they appear in full-name, not just the usual three-letter first-name, versions). On the other hand ... well, the puzzle is showing you All The Same Names It Always Shows You. So, I guess your feelings about the puzzle are going to depend on whether you see the theme as a dazzling new dish or reheated leftovers. I thought it was cute, though it wore a bit toward the end. I didn't catch the word ladder angel until the end, when I was trying to make sense of the themer logic, i.e. why these names, why this order, what about UMA Thurman and UTA Hagen, etc. The one thing that didn't work for me was EVE ENSLER, which is a real clunker, especially as the final themer, considering she's the only one out of terminal-A rhythm. I guess you could see her name as putting an emphatic final exclamation point on the name series ("INA IDA ADA ANA AVA EVA EVE!"). And that seems a reasonable reading. But when I was actually solving, my brain made that record needle scratch sound. I wanted them all to be tra-la two-syllable names ending in "A." But instead we get one syllable (the only such answer). And an "E" ending (the only such answer). Again, it's all a matter of taste. That finale is either rhythmically perfect or jarringly out of sync ... or else you didn't even notice. Anyway, there's a basic thoughtfulness and cleverness and creativity here that I mostly enjoyed. It's also at least ... plausible? ... that the puzzle isn't just a word ladder, but one with specific thematic content. I mean, it goes from INA GARTEN ... to EVE ... so ... if it helps to read that progression biblically, why not go ahead and do that?

The fill made me wince maybe a little more than it should. Some of it was because of improbable plurals (AMNIOS but *especially* EASTERS ...), but most of it was from a slight excess of crosswordese (ECOLI and ENEWS and EELIEST *and* EERIE **and** EPEES, etc.), as well as abbrevs. I have just never liked or heard people actually use (specifically CRIT and VID). In a theme this dense (seven long names!), it's probably hard to keep your fill whistle-clean throughout. There are a number of longer Downs, but none of them ELEVATEs the fill quality much. They're mostly solid, though there's a mild dreariness to the sheer number of preposition-ending phrases (SNARL AT, STEAM UP, KNEEL ON), and a definite dreariness to RATLIKE and BEATDOWNS (the latter of which is both the most original bit of non-theme fill and the most violent and depressing). The theme is the thing today, and as I say, it mostly delivered for me. Oh, I almost forgot "WELL, DUH!" Was that a high point for me? Well ... yes. 

No real difficulty today if you solve crosswords regularly (grid is 16 wide, so if it played a little slow, maybe that's why). Name themes are often real dicey for segments of the solving population, depending on what field / era the names are drawn from, but as I say these names should all be super-familiar to the daily gridder. The fill didn't seem tough at all, and the cluing was pretty transparent. The toughest part for me was trying to navigate the vowels in DUVERNAY. I first put it in as DUV-RN-Y. Thank god for fair crosses. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Like the protagonist at the start of "28 Days Later" / SUN 10-9-22 / One of the two main branches of Buddhism / Celebrity gossip show with an exclamation point in its title / Writer known for his anthropomorphic animal characters / Visual depiction of the apparatus used by the starred professionals / Mario who founded a fashion empire / One with a marsupium affectionately

Constructor: Jessie Trudeau and Ross Trudeau

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "Rise to the Challenge" — every theme answer is a person who (literally) CLIMBS THE LADDER (65A: Advances through corporate ranks ... and what the answer to each starred clue in this puzzle does). The entire middle visually depicts a ladder (all "H"s) (8D: Visual depiction of the apparatus used by the starred professionals). Several themers are split, in two, with the first part coming at the ladder from from the west and then the second part continuing on across the grid from several "rungs" higher up the ladder (as many rungs higher as are indicated at the end of each theme clue) (Note: For all non-theme, "ladder"-intersecting answers, the "H"s in the "ladder" are just "H"s):

Theme answers:

• CHIMNEY / SWEEP (25A: *Worker with a brush [three rungs])
• SUBMARINE / COMMANDER (56A: *Captain with a periscope [four rungs])
• CHERRY / PICKER (90A: *Seasonal orchard worker [eight rungs])
• TELEPHONE / REPAIRMAN (101A: *Worker for AT&T or Verizon [four rungs])
• HOUSE / PAINTER (123A: *One putting a coat on outside [three rungs])

Word of the Day: PAUL VI (82D: Pope of 1963-78) —

Pope Paul VI (Latin: Paulus VI; Italian: Paolo VI; born Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini, Italian: [dʒoˈvanni batˈtista enˈriːko anˈtɔːnjo maˈriːa monˈtiːni]; 26 September 1897 – 6 August 1978) was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 21 June 1963 to his death in 1978. Succeeding John XXIII, he continued the Second Vatican Council, which he closed in 1965, implementing its numerous reforms. He fostered improved ecumenical relations with Eastern Orthodoxand Protestant churches, which resulted in many historic meetings and agreements. [...] His positions on birth control, promulgated famously in the 1968 encyclical Humanae vitae, were often contested, especially in Western Europe and North America. [...] Pope Francis canonised Paul VI on 14 October 2018. (wikipedia)

• • •

The visual gag here is clever, and the way the theme answers actually, physically "climb" the ladder is pretty nifty as well. That said, this was absurdly easy and all the interesting parts were over very quickly, leaving only the rather dull work of filling in an acceptable but fairly unremarkable Sunday-sized grid. I got the theme very early:

... and then decided to see if I could go through and get all the climbing people quickly, with as little help as possible. This turned out to be pretty doable:

You can see I got distracted and did some extra filling of the grid on the way down, but REPAIRMAN was pretty much the only part of the entire themer set that gave me any trouble. I don't know how you keep a theme like this from unfolding all at once, from giving away the entire game early on. There was some fun involved in seeing just what kind of person would be "climbing the ladder," but those answers themselves were just ... answers. The climbing part was cool, but they themselves were just ordinary, and occasionally a little arbitrary. Why should it be a SUBMARINE COMMANDER as opposed to anyone else on that submarine? And is cherry-picking really a ladder-associated activity. I know that the machine known as a "cherry picker" elevates workers into air ... coincidentally, the people I associate most with cherry pickers are actually TELEPHONE / REPAIRMeN, though any kind of person doing maintenance or construction work might use them. But back to my cherry point: I google image searched "cherry picking" and none of the images featured ladders. Not too laddery, that one. But the others work very well. Roofers and gutter cleaners are the main ladder climbers in my neighborhood, but HOUSE / PAINTER is in that same category. I don't really know what a CHIMNEY / SWEEP does, at a nuts and bolts level, but I assume they have to get on your roof somehow, so ... sure, why not? Anyway, I thought the theme was cute, the overall solving experience just so-so. Nothing wrong with it, but nothing thrilling about it either. All the interest is in the theme, and with a theme this visually elaborate, perhaps that is enough.

From one perspective, 1-Across is just one answer in the puzzle, no better or worse than any other answer. From a more correct perspective, however, 1-Across matters more because it sets a tone—it's the first thing a solver is likely to see, and to try to tackle. So it's nice to open boldly, or at the very least, cleanly. This is all to say that I'm not too big a fan of opening the puzzle IN A COMA (1A: Like the protagonist at the start of "28 Days Later"). Never saw it, but I think it's a vampire movie (???), so I assumed the answer was something like UNDEAD or NOT DEAD or PRE-DEAD or something. IN A COMA, aside from being a prepositional phrase and thus semi-awkward as a standalone answer, is just grim. Sidenote: I watched "Coma" (1978) for the first time last week—also grim, and not just because of the comas, though it's cool to see late-career Richard Widmark, especially since he's still playing creeps (perfectly) well into his later years. Oh hey, double sidenote: there's a great ladder scene in "Coma"—in fact, the ladder in question is depicted on the cover of the home video release of the movie!

The point is, I wouldn't open my puzzle IN A COMA if I could help it. And SOA, as well as ONI next to MDC, weren't doing anyone any favors either. But mostly the constructors do a NICE JOB of filling the grid. Well, random popes are about as welcome as random Roman numerals, but since PAUL VI was actually pope with many solvers' living memory, he's not as random as, say, LEO VIII (whom I just made up ... I'm just assuming there was a LEO VIII ... yup, he was both pope and antipope!!! OK, now I've gone and tricked myself into liking LEO VIII, dammit!). The clue on RON was about the only thing in the grid that gave me any actual trouble (92D: Bacardi, e.g., in México). Beth ORTON > Kyle ORTON. That's about all I have to say about this one. 

Hope you enjoyed this one's ups and downs. See you later.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. ENBY = N.B. = non-binary (108D: Genderqueer identity). It's been in the puzzle before and it will be in the puzzle again so if you don't know it, learn it.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Rosebud ravager / SUN 7-24-22 / Downwind locales for ships / English landing spot / First pope to be called the great / NFL star Elliott to fans / Where all the people that come and go stop and say "hello," in a 1967 hit

Constructor: Jessie Trudeau and Ross Trudeau

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "Going Somewhere?" — various famous roads go Down, where they intersect (at the "E") with answers that end in the letter string "ROME"; the revealer is ALL ROADS LEAD TO ROME (115A: Aphorism that's visually depicted five times in this grid):

Theme answers:

• MASS PIKE (7D: Easternmost leg of I-90, familiarly) / BICHROME (51A: Two-colored)
• PENNY LANE (24D: Where all the people that come and go stop and say "hello," in a 1967 hit) / AERODROME (68A: English landing spot)
• RODEO DRIVE (37D: Noted shopping mecca) / ETHAN FROME (88A: Edith Wharton's "ruin of a man")
• EVERGREEN TERRACE (13D: Home of the Simpson and Flanders households) / IMPOSTER SYNDROME (98A: Habitual fear of being exposed as a fraud)
• PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE (20D: One side of D.C.'s Federal Triangle) / ALL ROADS LEAD TO ROME

Word of the Day: Andrea BOCELLI (94D: Of whom Celine Dion said "If God would have a singing voice, he must sound a lot like ...") —

Andrea Bocelli OMRI OMDSM (Italian: [anˈdreːa boˈtʃɛlli]; born 22 September 1958) is an Italian operatic tenor and multi-instrumentalist. He was born visually impaired, and was born with congenital glaucoma, and at the age of 12, Bocelli became completely blind, following a brain hemorrhage resulting from a football accident. After performing evenings in piano bars and competing in local singing contests, Bocelli signed his first recording contract with the Sugar Music label. He rose to fame in 1994, winning the 44th Sanremo Music Festival performing "Il mare calmo della sera".

Since 1994, Bocelli has recorded 15 solo studio albums of both pop and classical music, three greatest hits albums, and nine complete operas, selling over 75 million records worldwide.^[4] He has had success as a crossover performer, bringing classical music to the top of international pop charts. His album, Romanza, is one of the best-selling albums of all time, while Sacred Arias is the biggest selling classical album by any solo artist in history. My Christmas was the best-selling holiday album of 2009 and one of the best-selling holiday albums in the United States. The 2019 album Sì debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart and US Billboard 200, becoming Bocelli's first number-one album in both countries. His song "Con te partirò", included on his second album Bocelli, is one of the best-selling singles of all time. The track was licensed to feature in a series of television commercials for TIM in the late 1990s, which eventually became very popular in Italy. (wikipedia)

• • •

Dang, it even says "CARD" 
right there in the comic! Gah!

The first thing a proofreader or editor ought to have caught is that the "aphorism" in question is not "depicted five times in this grid"; it's depicted once. ALL ROADS LEAD TO ROME ... that's the theme. That describes all the themers taken as a group. There are five examples of roads leading to ROME, but ALL ROADS are not depicted "five times," as the clue claims. I don't care that it's a minor point—it's in the most major part of the puzzle, the revealer clue, so the phrasing ought to be Precise. [Aphorism represented visually by five answers in this puzzle], something like that; that would be accurate. The five long Downs together represent the aphorism. Once. Not separately five times. Yes, NERD, I know. Whatever, the phrasing on the revealer clue is nails + chalkboard to me. Aside from that hitch, the theme is interesting. Well, the grid is interesting, for sure—mirror symmetry along the NW to SE axis. The intersecting themers end up forming a kind of nesting arrowhead pattern, with all long answers meeting at their very tips (the "E" in "ROME" in each case). Structurally innovative. I was not a fan of the weird long non-themers just hanging on there non-thematically, but I guess that's the price you pay for this particular architectural gambit. WORSHIPPER with two "P"s is weird to me because I'm not British and the clue is not tagged as British. RORSCHACH CARDS was extremely weird to me because after TESTS and BLOTS I was completely out of ideas. I literally teach a comic with a protagonist named RORSCHACH who literally takes a RORSCHACH Test (in Book VI, administered by Dr. Malcolm Long, whose mind RORSCHACH just wrecks), and yet CARDS was absolutely brutal for me, even with the "C" in place. If it hadn't been for YODELS, I think that CARDS section would've destroyed me. I had TACK for FORK, largely because it's a way better answer for that clue (74A: Stick with it!). Had ORS instead of IFS (are ORS a thing???) (87A: Some coding statements). Just a disaster in there. Anyway, the cards are real things, just ... not the first thing that comes to mind when you see RORSCHACH (as Google here can tell you):

The British call airports "airports," so I had no idea what 68A: English landing spot was going for. I thought ... maybe the English landed ... on Plymouth Rock? I dunno. AERODROME is an odd one, as is BICHROME. Just not words I ever see or use or really ... know. See also LEESHORES (?) (80D: Downwind locales for ships). But as for AERODROME and BICHROME: you do what you gotta do to make your theme work, I guess. Outside the themers, the fill is pretty ordinary. The runaway highlight of the day for me was EVERGREEN TERRACE! That's gonna be a gimme or a lotta work, depending on your level of "Simpsons" fandom (mine: high). I liked that answer, and I thought the revealer itself was cute. 

A few more things:

• 94D: Of whom Celine Dion said "If God would have a singing voice, he must sound a lot like ..." (BOCELLI) — I knew this pretty quickly but ... could not decide if it was two "C"s one "L" or two "L"s one "C." As for who has the voice of God ... I'm gonna stick with Marianne Faithfull's assessment on this one:


I have to tell you, the voice of God, if you really want to know, is Aretha Franklin.

• 43A: One looking for missing persons (TRACER) — awkward way to clue this, but I guess it allows you to avoid the more probably bullet clue, so OK
• 124A: Apply (to) (REFER) — why doesn't this make sense to me? I'm sure there's an equivalency somewhere in the dictionary, but I can't really make this work in everyday speech.
• 1D: Rosebud ravager (APHID) — soooo hard for me. I was like "uh ... TIME? SNOW? FIRE? I haven't seen the movie in a long time!"

• 98A: Habitual fear of being exposed as a fraud (IMPOSTER SYNDROME)  — still haunted by IMPOSTOR ... which is how the NYTXW told me it was spelled two months ago.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Good or bad vacuum review / THU 6-16-22 / Eventgoers / One performing a palm print analysis / Trochee's counterpart / Facts First sloganeer / Setting for memorable cable car scene in Moonraker / Leads as a D&D campaign / Biblical patriarch with two-syllable name / That's a goldang lie! / Tree in the etymology of gin

Constructor: Parker Higgins and Ross Trudeau

Relative difficulty: Well, I thought it was Easy, but early social media response indicates otherwise, so who knows?

THEME: "That TTTTTTT Show" (i.e. "That 7 T's Show" i.e. "That '70s Show") — OK, that's not the theme, but that is an example of how this theme works: what *sounds* like an enumeration of letters (four N's, eight O's, two T's, ten D's, respectively) is represented in the grid by that Actual Number Of Letters. So:

Theme answers:

• NNNNIC SCIENTIST = "forensic scientist" (NNNNIC => "four N's" + -IC => "forensic")
• TOMOOOOOOOO = "tomatoes" (TOMOOOOOOOO =>  TOM + "eight O's" => "tomatoes")
• CUTIE PATT = "cutie patooties" (PATT => PA- + "two Ts" => "patooties")
• ADDDDDDDDDD = "attendees" (ADDDDDDDDDD => A- + "10 D's" => "attendees")

Word of the Day: "Moonraker" (54A: Setting for the memorable cable car scene in "Moonraker" => RIO) —

Moonraker is a 1979 spy-fi film, the eleventh in the James Bond series produced by Eon Productions, and the fourth to star Roger Moore as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. The third and final film in the series to be directed by Lewis Gilbert, it co-stars Lois Chiles, Michael Lonsdale, Corinne Cléry, and Richard Kiel. Bond investigates the theft of a Space Shuttle, leading him to Hugo Drax, the owner of the Shuttle's manufacturing firm. Along with space scientist Dr. Holly Goodhead, Bond follows the trail from California to Venice, Rio de Janeiro, the Amazon rainforest, and finally into outer space to prevent a plot to wipe out the world population and to recreate humanity with a master race. (wikipedia)

• • •

Well I'm awake in the middle of the night because of the worst thunderstorm I've ever been in in my life. It's still happening, though the rain and lightning have abated a bit. At its worst, the sky was constant flashing, like God 's streetlights were flickering, and the lightning + thunder were pure assault. I'm awake. Wife's awake. Cats are ... god knows ... all over the house, looking at me like "Why?" So I thought I better sit down and solve the puzzle and post the blog quickly, before the power goes out. While these are perhaps not ideal conditions under which to solve a puzzle, this puzzle was So Good that conditions ceased to matter. In fact, maybe they helped. Maybe the puzzle felt even More delightful than it was because it took my mind off the menacing cacophony. Kind of impressive that the puzzle was able to do that, but the wackiness involved here is such loopy, gonzo, avant-garde, NTH-degree wackiness that I could not resist. I could only succumb to the vibe. I mean, I thought "wow, it takes a ton of courage to just go with eight damn O's in a row" ... and *then* I met the 10 T's. LOL. What a ride. And the grid shape made this solving experience extra-special. The whole thing felt alien, in the best possible way. The mirror symmetry, the stacked Acrosses up top, and especially the column of three 9s at the center bottom, all gave this a look and feel that took it way, way out of the ordinary. And yet not so far that it was undoable. It was, in fact, extremely doable, though I can see (online, already) that people are not grasping the theme concept as easily as I did, and are getting, let's say, frustrated. I completely sympathize with this feeling. And I'm very sorry you didn't grasp the concept in a more timely fashion, because it made the whole solving experience a joy.

I was on this puzzle's side from 1-Across (1A: Good or bad vacuum review? = "SUCKS!"). Yeah, I know it's kind of childish, but so am I, so there. Those four N's in the first themer came together very quickly, and the only way I could make sense of them was, it turns out, the right way. Just say the number of letters out loud! Only ... at that point, I thought it was more an equation-type dealie, where I was supposed to say 4N, i.e. "foreign." So I was trying to make the "palm print analysis" performer into some kind of "foreign" person ... I had to build the rest of that answer from back to front, and then look at it again. "What's a "foreign I.C. SCIENTIST!?" And then I saw it. Boom. Truly one of the most satisfying Aha moments of the year. What I really loved was that the next themer didn't just throw me more N's!  I wasn't paying close attention to how the theme clues were marked (with quotation marks, so you know that in order to be correct, the answer must be *spoken*). So I went into the "tomato" answer trying to make it work normally. And since I had CAN instead of MAO (45A: Repeated Warhol subject), I had trouble seeing the "O"-string clearly at first. But then the "O"s kept piling up and I thought "ah, it's tomato something!" But no, once you put in 8 O's, you're out of room. It's just "tomatoes." I can't believe someone turned "tomatoes" and "attendees" into fascinating theme answers. Highly unlikely scenario. And the two T's! So wee! So cute! You got these ostentatious letter strings on the side of the grid, and then tucked down there at the bottom, just two little T's ... inside an answer that is *about* cuteness. Ha ha, there is no part of this ridiculous theme that doesn't work. 

I had little bits of trouble here and there, but nothing out of the ordinary for a Thursday. LOL'd at the "goldang" in 9D: "That's a goldang lie!" ("AIN'T SO"). Is that how HICKS talk? (HICKS felt a little icky, in that it's got an elitist / derogatory tone to it, but that was the only part of the puzzle where my joy wobbled a little ... I guess I didn't mind "HICKS" so much because it's the name of one of my favorite TV shows ... oh wait, that's "HACKS" ... nevermind). Anyway, that "goldang" answer held me up for several goldang seconds because I couldn't figure out what kind of goldang HICKSpeak they were going for. Then I put Samantha Bee on TNT (sorry, Sam) (12D: "Full Frontal With Samantha Bee" airer) ... then I couldn't make any sense out of 8D: Something that's asked (PRICE). After the top was sorted, though, the puzzle was very much a fast ride to the finish. I somehow remembered that RAJ was a character on that show I never could stand (39D: "The Big Bang Theory" role). I never saw "Moonraker," which feels like a betrayal of my gender/age cohort, but it wasn't hard to work out RIO. 

I love that the puzzle went to D&D instead of social media for DMS (49A: Leads, as a D&D campaign). The "DM" stands for "Dungeon Master," and to DM is to play that role in the game. Retro! (although people still play D&D ... it's just that in my mind, anyone playing it is automatically transported back in time to the early '80s ... a wormhole opens up the second you start playing ... it's weird). I balked a tiny bit at BUDDY MOVIES, since "BUDDY COMEDY" feels like the more correct phrase, esp. for this clue, but sure, BUDDY MOVIES, that sounds fine (26D: "Booksmart" and "Dumb and Dumber," e.g.). Certainly not "off" enough to ruin my enjoyment of this puzzle. Wow, look at that! Done with the write-up at 5am! What a ride. And the thunderstorm has (mostly) passed. And the birds are singing their "WTF!?!"s. Cool. Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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German opera highlight / THU 5-12-22 / Fortune 500 company with heart in its logo / Diacritical mark resembling a dieresis / Tree under which Siddhartha attained enlightenment

Constructor: Ross Trudeau

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: UMLAUT (58A: Diacritical mark resembling a dieresis, both of which are represented in this puzzle) — a rebus puzzle where four double-O squares sit atop four letters that would (in their natural, non-crossword state) be spelled with an UMLAUT: 

Theme answers:

• ÜBERMENSCH (18A: Nietzschean ideal) [UMLAUT from OOPS]
• NAÏVETE (36A: Trait of a babe in the woods) [UMLAUT from SPOOR]
• BRONTËS (38A: Noted literary sisters) [UMLAUT from IT'S COOL] 
• HÄAGEN-DAZS (50A: Ice cream brand whose first storefront was in Brooklyn Heights) [UMLAUT from ATWOOD]

Word of the Day: dieresis (see 58A) —

1: a mark ¨ placed over a vowel to indicate that the vowel is pronounced in a separate syllable (as in naïve or Brontë) — compare UMLAUT (merriam-webster.com)

1

[UMLAUT: a diacritical mark ¨ placed over a vowel to indicate a more central or front articulation 

— compare DIAERESIS (merriam-webster.com)]

• • •

Well, I have now learned the difference between UMLAUT and dieresis, so that's something. Actually, I didn't just learn the difference—this is my first encounter with "dieresis" at all (that I can remember). I think of everything "over" a letter as a "diacritical mark" and if anyone has tried to press further information on my brain, my brain has apparently responded "nah, it's cool, we'll just leave it there." This puzzle was so easy that I no-looked UMLAUT ... which made understanding what the hell the theme was supposed to be something of a challenge. I eventually went looking for any revealer I might've missed, and there it was. I think the clue on UMLAUT is a convoluted jargony mess, but the concept here is very clever and neatly executed. Genuine aha when I saw that UMLAUT was the key to this otherwise mysterious "OO" puzzle. I guess the first and last "OO"s are UMLAUTs (appearing, as they do, in German words), whereas the middle two are diereses. The former changes pronunciation, the latter syllabic value or weight. It's slightly weird to have a theme centered around a diacritical mark, and then have one of the theme answers contain a different diacritical mark that doesn't get visually represented (the acute accent on the final "E" in NAIVETÉ), especially when that is the diacritical mark in NAIVETÉ more likely to actually get used (the dieresis over the "I" being largely ignored these days). But still, if we focus just on the double-Os in this theme: IT'S COOL.

I wish the solving experience had been more pleasant. ÜBERMENSCH is a highlight, as is SNARFDOWN, but this puzzle lost a lot of goodwill early with the wretched UNPC (1D: Not acceptable, in a way), which I can't believe hasn't been scrapped from all wordlists by now. "PC" has always been a reactionary concept weaponized against people who have wanted pretty modest things like You To Not Be Racist / Sexist / Homophobic. A way of legitimizing longstanding bigoted norms by blaming the target of bigotry for being offended. A dishonest, garbage concept from the get-go. The same people now using "woke" derisively (and haphazardly) were the ones blah blah blahing about PC this and PC that in the '90s. And that's the other wretched thing about UNPC (or NOTPC): it feels dated. Anyway, it's about as pleasant to encounter as SPOOR. Or NOOUTS / APBS / TSELIOT all in a row, or ADE APSO ISH D'OH clustered together, or ACTII OYE LOOIES ELMO MILA EMU AURAS NYE ARIE (!?) (52D: German opera highlight) ... again, some of this avalanche is fine, but there's just a lot. It's true that the theme is dense (pairs of stacked words rather than the usual freestanding words), but still, the fact is the only really fun part of this was the payoff: the revealer. Which is something. But it would be great if the trip were as enjoyable as the destination.

["OYE Como Va" / TITO Puente!]

And ugh, I forgot to mention ONEEAR. I don't know which is worse, the way ONEEAR looks in the grid or the way people look when they wear the bluetooth headsets in question. But hey, look—all you people who got run over (i.e. Naticked) by BODHI last week (or whenever it was) got rewarded today, as your newfound, hard-won knowledge had occasion to be put to use. LOL at clue on HAMPSHIRE (8D: One of the "Five Colleges" of Massachusetts). There are roughly 13 million colleges in Massachusetts. Also, I've never heard of this so-called "Five Colleges," though I've heard of them all individually: Amherst, HAMPSHIRE, Mount Holyoke, Smith, UM-Amherst. Anyway, the real Five Colleges are the Claremont Colleges, and don't let anyone tell you any different.

See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Stuffed Jewish dish / THU 4-7-22 / Jordan Peele's production company named for a classic horror short story / 1981 video game that featured the first appearance of Mario / Purchases for a high-tech hobby

Constructor: Lucy Howard and Ross Trudeau

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: TURNKEYS (48A: Jailers ... or a hint to "unlocking" four answers in this puzzle) — four Down answers intersect the letter string "KEY," which must be "turned" 90 degrees to become part of the Down answers in order for those answers to make any sense:

Theme answers:

• WHIS(KEY) JUG (3D: Moonshine container)
• MON(KEY) PAW (9D: Jordan Peele's production company, named for a classic horror short story)
• DON(KEY) KONG (36D: 1981 video game that featured the first appearance of Mario)
• TUR(KEY) DAY (40D: Thanksgiving)

Word of the Day: EBOY (41D: Gen-Z style with emo and anime influences) —

E-girls and e-boys, sometimes collectively known as e-kids, are a youth subculture that emerged in the late 2010s, notably popularized by the video-sharing app TikTok. It is an evolution of emo, scene and mall goth fashion combined with Japanese street fashion (such as anime, cosplay, kawaii and lolita fashion) and K-pop 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". (wikipedia)

• • •

Several things conspired to make this the hardest Thursday I've solved in a while. First NOOB. Which was not spelled that way. Somehow (1A: Beginner, in lingo = NEWB) (side note: what lingo? maybe name it? as is, it looks like there's a word missing from the clue). But even after clearing that up, I was staring at WHISE JUG and thinking that there was simply a type of jug that I had not heard of before. Maybe the constructors have one of those ridiculously massive and not properly curated wordlists and the obscure WHISE JUG was some 19th-century holdover that had found its way onto said list. I dunno. I just accepted that the answer was WHISE JUG. Further, I've somehow never heard of a KISHKA, which ... how? (6D: Stuffed Jewish dish). KNISH, sure. KISHKA somehow got past me. So that just made me feel bad about myself (not the puzzle's fault, obv). Further further, the cluing was weird and had me writing in wrong answers frequently. UNIONIZES before UNIONISTS was bad (17A: Organized workers). Are UNIONISTS just ... union members? Like me? I guess that's an OK term, but not good enough for me to enjoy your obviously deliberately misdirective clue (when the misdirection answer is stronger than your own answer, then the misdirection actually works against you). Still not sure what the clue on BEAM is doing (13D: Big smile). BEAM is a verb. If I smile, I do not have a BEAM on my face. I'd sooner drink from a WHISE JUG than sport a BEAM. But the clue means the answer *has* to be a noun. So ... the puzzle was very much a slog up top. It got less sloggy when I finally got the theme and realized that WHISE JUG was not, in fact, a thing I was being asked to accept. But it remained pretty sloggy at the clue and (desperate-to-be-current) fill level. ROBOT KITS was absolutely joyless. Really expecting something new and fancy but just got ... two words that might go next to each other. Not even sure what these kits are, or why you are buying so many. I think the theme is clever enough, and certainly the bottom half was easier to enjoy / appreciate once I understood the theme. But only JOCKEY FOR felt properly original and interesting as an answer.

[I was *this* far before I "got" the theme]

[Impostor syndrome feeling] is way, way, way too specific a clue for DOUBT. Without the SELF- in front of DOUBT, it actually feels just flat-out wrong. If I've heard of E-BOY, I forgot, and as I read about it (see "Word of the Day" entry, above), it was clear why I forgot. My brain was protecting me from things I shouldn't know. TikTok is a lot of rich tech guys getting richer by selling screen addiction and mental health problems disguised as youth agency (fun! empowerment! youth!). But I'm old so my opinions are easily ignorable. I do get it. But I'll take "old guy who is highly suspicious of TikTok" to "non-teen pretending to be down with TikTok in a desperate attempt to be relevant." Anyway, the deleterious effects of TikTok (and other forms of social media) are well known, even if you choose to ignore them. Here's Amanda Hess in the NYT:

Besides the whole NOOB fiasco, the worst mistake-pit I fell in was the GAS / GEL pit ... which is to say I wrote in GAS and then "confirmed" it with GEL before ultimately realizing the answers were actually HAY and HAT, respectively (34A: Fuel for a mustang? / 34D: Solution to a bad hair day). The lowercase "m" on "mustang" should've clued me in that it wasn't the car, but ... I solve before 5am, so sometimes, the wires, the brain wires, they have connectivity issues. Last thing I'll say is that MURMUR is not a [Soothing sound]. It's an annoying inaudible speech sound. Or it implies rumor / gossip, which can suck. At best, it's an R.E.M. album. COOING is a [Soothing sound]. I guess a brook can MURMUR pleasantly, but unless I am standing right next to Wordsworth, I am not apt to make the MURMUR-"soothing" connection. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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