Low-priced car introduced in 1980 / SAT 4-4-26 / Fulfillment center? / Tourist hotspot in Uttar Pradesh / Fashionable stars of showbiz, slangily / Conceited sort, disrespectfully / F or G but not H / Member of a militant Islamist movement in Afghanistan and Pakistan / Famous french filmmaker who was the son of a famous painter / One side of the college football rivalry branded as "America's Game" / Figures in the films "Kazaam" and "Wishmaster"

Constructor: Royce Ferguson

Relative difficulty: Easy (if you knew most of the many names, which I did)

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: JEAN RENOIR (58A: Famous french filmmaker who was the son of a famous painter) —

Jean Renoir (French: [ʁənwaʁ]; 15 September 1894 – 12 February 1979) was a French filmmaker, actor, producer and author. His La Grande Illusion (1937) and The Rules of the Game (1939) are often cited by critics as among the greatest films ever made. In 2002, he was ranked fourth on the BFI's Sight & Sound poll of the greatest directors. Among numerous honours accrued during his lifetime, he received a Lifetime Achievement Academy Award in 1975. Renoir was the son of the painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir and the uncle of the cinematographer Claude Renoir. With Claude, he made The River (1951), the first color film shot in India. A lifelong lover of theater, Renoir turned to the stage for The Golden Coach (1952) and French Cancan (1955). He was one of the first filmmakers to be known as an auteur; the critic Penelope Gilliatt said a Renoir shot could be identified "in a thousand miles of film."

Pauline Kael wrote that "At his greatest, Jean Renoir expresses the beauty in our common humanity—the desires and hopes, the absurdities and follies, that we all, to one degree or another, share." Per The New York Times: "The style that ran through Mr. Renoir's films — a mixture of tenderness, irony and Gallic insouciance‐was caught in a famous line from his 1939 masterpiece, The Rules of the Game. It was spoken by Octave, played by the director himself: 'You see, in this world, there is one awful thing, and that is that everyone has his reasons.'” (wikipedia)

• • •

A lot like yesterday's. Insufficiently interesting. SO-SO. You can't really fault any of the marquee answers, but there's not much to get excited about. I was pretty excited about JEAN RENOIR, but that might be a niche feeling. Old cinema, foreign cinema, most cinema that isn't modern franchise cinema (and even some of that) I'm always going to love to see (can't believe we got full-named JEAN RENOIR before we got simple three-letter OZU, but whatever, that's not the puzzle's fault, exactly). JEAN RENOIR This one also had GLITTERATI and OSCAR HOSTS (side-by-side!), so it was a pretty cinematic puzzle, at least where the longer answers were concerned. But there's not much else you can say about these longer answers except "yeah, ok, that's fine, I guess." I don't really know the term SPACE SHOT (14D: Rocket to the moon, e.g.). Had to infer it from MOON SHOT (a very real term). EMAIL SPAM and PAID AD and POMPOUS ASS aren't exactly enjoyable topics. Also unappealing: TALIB, what the hell, why? Why would you want to center (literally) a brutally misogynist regime?) (35A: Member of a militant Islamist movement in Afghanistan and Pakistan). "The Taliban has been condemned for restricting human rights, including women's rights to work and have an education, and for the persecution of ethnic minorities" (wikipedia). You could've gone a different way with TALIB. It would've added (yet) another name to this grid, but in this case, I think it would've been worth it.

If the longer answers were, on average, just OK, the shorter stuff was worse than usual, I think. Lots and lots of overfamiliar, super-crosswordy stuff: SUPES, ARYA, ALIA, ALTA, SRO, stuff like that. EOCENE, AGRA, that spelling of GENII (which assumes the singular "genius" (!?)). Meh. The grid was also very name-heavy. I got name-lucky, in that JEAN RENOIR and Dennis LEHANE were both gimmes for me, and I was at least familiar with all the other names in the grid (even ARYA, which I am familiar with against my will, only because crosswords have forced the issue). There's also OPRAH and CECE and GAYE and SERRA and SVEN, and there could easily have been golfer Ernie ELS as well, but the crossword wisely chose to take that answer in a "letteral" direction (29A: Fulfillment center?) (two "L"s (ELS) sit at the "center" of the word "Fulfillment" ... they're a little off-center, actually, but I think I'm gonna let that slide). 

[27A: Chart toppers]

When's the last time anyone saw a YUGO! (in real life or in the grid)? (37A: Low-priced car introduced in 1980). It's been decades since I've seen one in the wild. Looks like it's been less than four years since the last crossword appearance for YUGO. Bizarrely (but also predictably), despite having its one moment of glory in the 1980s, the YUGO didn't appear in the NYTXW until 2010 (!?). Since then it's appeared six more times. YUGO is turning out to be far more popular as a piece of crossword nostalgia than it ever was as a car. The YUGO was marketed in the U.S. between 1985 and 1992. YUGOs were actually produced through 2008, but the car was withdrawn from U.S. markets in the early '90s due to U.N. sanctions on Yugoslavia. "Despite moderate success during its run in the United States and several other export markets, it was criticized for its design, poor safety, and reliability, though the car has also picked up a cult following" (wikipedia).

Bullets:

• 49A: Sold-out inits. (SRO) — Sold Right Out!
• 1D: Lunchbox staples, for short (PBJS) — dropped PBJS in immediately but then withdrew it when I couldn't think of a type of RYE that started with "J" (!???). I honestly had SEEDED RYES in there for a bit (17A: Popular loaves for corned beef sandwiches).
• 2D: "Twist, Lick, Dunk" product (OREO) — apparently OREO is gearing up for some kind of promotional "Twist, Lick Dunk Challenge" right now, with an embossed "Twist Lick Dunk" cookie and everything. This article about the campaign is from just five days ago. The OREOverse is vast. And yes, OREOverse is a valid word. From their website:

• 11D: Waste watchdog, in short (EPA) — gotta quit pretending this government is meaningfully "watching" anything. It's laughable.
• 44D: Someone having mixed success at work? (DEE JAY) — DJs create mixes, which is what the clue is punning on: "DJs commonly use audio equipment that can play at least two sources of recorded music simultaneously. This enables them to blend tracks together to create transitions between recordings and develop unique mixes of songs" (wikipedia).
• 54D: Like some tongues (TIED) — me: "PINK!" Too much time around kitties and puppies (and humans, I guess).

• 55D: One side of the college football rivalry branded as "America's Game" (ARMY) — LOL "America's Game." I think most "Americans" care about as much about this rivalry as they do about Harvard-Yale. "America's Game"!? I remember when the Atlanta Braves used to style themselves as "America's Team" ... because their games were on TBS and so could be seen across the country (which was not true of other teams, back in the days before MLB streaming packages). "America's Game" is about as convincing as "America's Team," is what I'm saying. You can say it, but ... 

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Large aquatic insect / THU 5-30-24 / Investment bank that folded in 2008 / Space on a CD track where a hidden song can be placed / Onetime head of the Chicago Outfit / California red, informally / Leaves with no moves, as a chess piece

Constructor: Royce Ferguson

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "THE WALLS HAVE EARS" (7D: "Shh! People may be listening" ... or a hint to eight squares in this puzzle) — a rebus puzzle where "EAR" can be found in four boxes along the left edge (or "wall") of the grid and four boxes along the right. 

Theme answers:

• WEAR AND TEAR (1D: Routine damage)
• HEART-TO-HEART (36D: Distinguished students)
• "HEAR YE, HEAR YE" (13D: Cry from a town crier)
• BEAR STEARNS (45D: Investment bank that folded in 2008)

Word of the Day: PREGAP (4D: Space on a CD track where a hidden song can be placed) —

The pregap on a Red Book audio CD is the portion of the audio track that precedes "index 01" for a given track in the table of contents (TOC). The pregap ("index 00") is typically two seconds long and usually, but not always, contains silence. Popular uses for having the pregap contain audio are live CDs, track interludes, and hidden songs in the pregap of the first track (detailed below). // The track 01 pregap was used to hide computer data, allowing computers to detect a data track whereas conventional CD players would continue to see the CD as an audio CD. // This method was made obsolete in mid 1996 when an update to Windows 95 in driver SCSI1HLP.VXD made the pregap track inaccessible. It is unclear whether this change in Microsoft Windows' behavior was intentional: for instance, it may have been intended to steer developers away from the pregap method and encourage what became the Blue Book specification "CD Extra" format. // On certain CDs, such as Light Years by Kylie Minogue, HoboSapiens by John Cale, or Factory Showroom by They Might Be Giants, the pregap before track 1 contains a hidden track. The track is truly hidden in the sense that most conventional standalone players and software CD players will not see it. // Such hidden tracks can be played by playing the first song and "rewinding" (more accurately, seeking in reverse) until the actual start of the whole CD audio track. // Not all CD drives can properly extract such hidden tracks. Some drives will report errors when reading these tracks, and some will seem to extract them properly, but the extracted file will contain only silence. // Other CDs contain additional audio information in the pre-gap area of other tracks, resulting in the audio only being heard on a conventional CD player if the CD is allowed to "play through," but not if you jump to the next track. // Some CDs also contain phantom tracks consisting of only index 0 data, meaning the track can only be played on a conventional CD player by allowing the CD to play through a previous track to the next track. (wikipedia)

• • •

Rooms have four walls, not two, so unless we are supposed to be in some kind of hallway (or, since the puzzle seems so canal-obsessed, canal), then the theme is kind of wobbly at its foundations. I got the revealer first and expected to find "EAR"s on all of the walls. But no. Just the east and west walls. Not only did the puzzle neglect to EAR two walls, it also made the EARs ridiculously easy to find, arraying them very neatly, two in each of the four "wall" answers. It is very, very easy to get a longer answer when you know, before you even look at the clue, that it will contain not one but two "EAR"s. At about the halfway point, I decided to see if I could just fill in the remaining two "wall" answers with absolutely no assistance from crosses, and, sure enough:

That's a lot of real estate to just give away. In fact, the revealer itself gives most everything away, leaving us with nothing to do but find "EAR"s, like some kind of autumnal version of an EGG hunt (I'm imagining that the ears are ears of corn, but you could imagine that they are actual human ears if you wanted to go more of a Blue Velvet route). Hear an EAR, there an EAR. Shrug. The puzzle has a good concept, or at least a promising one, but (as happens so often) the execution doesn't really do the concept justice, failing to give us the proper four-walls experience, and failing to consider that once you get the revealer, it's just EAR EAR EAR etc. a barrage of EARs, all in predictable places. So, not nearly as much fun, nor as tough, as it should've been.

I took a weird route through this puzzle. When I couldn't get 1A: Chicken (WIMP) to work—I could think only of (COW)ARD but did not have enough (i.e. any) evidence to suggest there was a "COW" rebus afoot—I moved to the neighboring (due north) section and plunked down my first answer: EAU (6D: French homophone of "haut"). And then ... the revealer was just right there. I didn't have to go down to the bottom of the grid to retrieve it; it just leapt into my boat. I had a few crosses in place before I saw the clue, but I don't think I would even have needed them. After that, I went EAR-hunting, and, well, ducks in a barrel at that point (what good are metaphors if you can't mix them?)

The grid holds no real interest outside of the theme. It's solid enough, but there are no surprises. No good ones, anyway. But hey, if, in addition to the economic disaster of 2008, you like thinking about the horrors of war (NAPALM) or the overturning of Roe v. Wade, then maybe this grid is your thing. The only interesting answers were more "interesting," quote unquote, in the sense that I'd never heard of them and I doubt the constructor had heard of them, since they seem like things that only an overstuffed Wordlist would know, or suggest. STONEFLY? (12D: Large aquatic insect)? PREGAP? (4D: Space on a CD track where a hidden song can be placed)? Leave it to the NYTXW to go all in on the technical minutiae of a music format only after it has become borderline obsolete. I've heard of hidden tracks, but PREGAP, yeeps, no. What an ugly word.  Me, I've lived my entire life in the POSTGAP era (The GAP, like me, having been established in 1969). 

As for STONEFLY, well, it got me to look up STONEFLY, and man are they ugly. I thought they were going to be cool-looking, like dragonflies—you know, maybe OPALESCE a little—but no. They look like sticks. Actually, there are apparently ~3,500 species of them (and counting), so they probably look all kinds of ways. Despite being "common," they haven't been seen in the NYTX for almost forty years (last appearance was in the pre-Shortz era, 1988). STONEFLIES has yet to appear, so some ambitious entomology-minded constructor has a real opportunity there...

Quick Notes:

• 36A: California's ___ Mudd College (HARVEY) — The editor is winking at you here, since Joel, like me, went to Pomona College, one of the five Claremont Colleges. Those five colleges: Pomona, Pitzer (my sister went here), Claremont McKenna (aka CMC), Scripps (women's college) ... and HARVEY Mudd (Nerd City for math/science students ... actually more Nerd Village, since the total population is under 1,000 students) (also, I mean "Nerd" very affectionately here, so please, no indignant letters) (seriously, though, is there still a unicycle club there?) 

• 27A: Leaves with no moves, as a chess piece (TRAPS) — ah, chess lingo. Where would the crossword be without you? I had MATES and when that didn't work, pffft. Just waited for crosses to do their magic.
• 58D: California red, informally (ZIN) — short for "Zinfandel"
• 8D: One way to prepare crèpes (SUZETTE) — good luck getting to SUZETTE any other way than through crèpes. All roads lead through Crèpetown. Just google [suzette] and find out. Whoever the crépes were named after (disputed!), they have faded into obscurity. Only the Crépes Survive!
• 35A: Opera singer Norman with a National Medal of Arts (JESSYE) — literally have a collection of her arias sitting near my turntable right now and *still* couldn't spell her name.
• 59A: Unpaid debt (ARREAR) — I am always going to complain about singular ARREAR. Its wikipedia entry, its dictionary entry—plural. Always plural. Only the crossword thinks a single ARREAR is a thing. It's enough to drive me to drink multiple ALCOHOLS. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. I did an interview with Edith Zimmerman for her "Drawing Media" column at kottke.org. As the title of the column suggests, the interview is *illustrated*! Lots of stuff about the media I consume (books music newsletters TV etc.). Also stuff about my cats. You might enjoy it.

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Dutch Golden Age painter / SAT 12-2-23 / Stuff in microdots / Boastful Eminem title with the Guinness world record for "most words in a hit single" (1,560) / Loudly lachrymates / Air pollution portmanteau / Constantly posting pictures and news about one's kids on social media

Constructor: Royce Ferguson

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Frans HALS (6A: Dutch Golden Age painter) —

Frans Hals the Elder (UK: /hæls/, US: /hɑːls, hælz, hɑːlz/, Dutch: [frɑns ˈɦɑls]; c. 1582 – 26 August 1666) was a Dutch Golden Age painter, chiefly of individual and group portraits and of genre works, who lived and worked in Haarlem.

Hals played an important role in the evolution of 17th-century group portraiture. He is known for his loose painterly brushwork. [...] Hals is best known for his portraits, mainly of wealthy citizens such as Pieter van den Broecke and Isaac Massa, whom he painted three times. He also painted large group portraits for local civic guards and for the regents of local hospitals. He was a Dutch Golden Age painter who practiced an intimate realism with a radically free approach. His pictures illustrate the various strata of society: banquets or meetings of officers, guildsmen, local councilmen from mayors to clerks, itinerant players and singers, gentlemen, fishwives, and tavern heroes. In his group portraits, such as The Banquet of the Officers of the St Adrian Militia Company in 1627, Hals captures each character in a different manner. The faces are not idealized and are clearly distinguishable, with their personalities revealed in a variety of poses and facial expressions.

Hals was fond of daylight and silvery sheen, while Rembrandt used golden glow effects based upon artificial contrasts of low light in immeasurable gloom. Hals seized a moment in the life of his subjects with rare intuition. What nature displayed in that moment he reproduced thoroughly in a delicate scale of color and with mastery over every form of expression. He became so clever that exact tone, light and shade, and modeling were obtained with a few marked and fluid strokes of the brush. He became a popular portrait painter and painted the wealthy of Haarlem on special occasions. He won many commissions for wedding portraits (the husband is traditionally situated on the left, and the wife situated on the right). His double portrait of the newly married Olycans hang side by side in the Mauritshuis, but many of his wedding portrait pairs have since been split up and are rarely seen together.

• • •

Almost destroyed by not knowing what "microdots" were ("Are they like Dippin' Dots?" I naively wondered) (8D: Stuff in microdots). But my salvation came, as it so often does, from OOXTEPLERNON, the God of Crosswordese, who descended from the clouds or rose from the mud or otherwise came from wherever he comes from, and bestowed upon me ... a painter. A painter named HALS (6A: Dutch Golden Age painter). Without HALS, I don't know what would've happened to me. With HALS I was stuck looking at a "finished NW corner that I did not understand. This is because, if I am admiring your impressive feat, I am way (way) more likely to exclaim "WHAT A BEAUT!" than I am "WHAT A BEAST!" (14A: Statement of admiration after someone's impressive feat). I mean, I'm not likely to exclaim either, but I feel like we've even had a version of "WHAT A BEAUT!" in the puzzle recently (yes, we have), so it seemed highly likely as an answer here. This left me with the mysterious "microdots" ingredient: LUD! Me: "Hmm, well, I don't know what 'microdots' are, so I guess it's plausible I wouldn't know what's in them either ... but LUD!?!? Why would you go HALS / LUD when you could've gone SAMS / MUD!? I do not get it." At some point the world's biggest "D'oh!" came crashing upon my head as I realized "Ohhhhhhhhhh, microdots! Microdots! It's LSD!" (Funny that ACID(S) is also in the grid). And that was that. Disaster averted. I went down to the SE, finished up the last bit ("EASY DOES IT..."), discovered the world's stupidest neologism (SHARENTING—seriously, first time hearing it), and that was that. I wonder if there are any fellow LUDdites out there today. Anyone? Also, for OOXTEPLERNON's Origin Story, see this puzzle from 14 years (!) ago, where OOX TEP LER and NON all appeared in a single row (!):

This one played pretty hard for me—a proper Saturday, in that respect. Not a fan of the modern coinages at all. I can't recall hearing or seeing anyone actually use ECOSHAMING or SHARENTING before, though the former seems more probable, and less cutesy, and therefore superior. But give the grid credit for originality. It might be trying a little too hard, but at least it's trying. "WHAT A BEAST!" falls under the "modern coinage" rubric too. I feel like it's mostly sports-related. I've definitely heard it. But that didn't keep me from going "WHAT A BEAUT!" like some earnest citizen in a Norman Rockwell painting. 

["There's too much LUD in our microdots! It ain't good for the children!"] 

One of the more grievous, not-terribly-enjoyable features of this puzzle was the sheer volume of kealoas*—so many short things that could've been one of several things. Is it YEP or YUP? TONS or LOTS or (ugh) GOBS? AS DO IT or SO DO I? BEBES or NENES? HEH or HAH? So over and over and over, you can't just write in the answer, you gotta go and fetch the crosses, which is, yes, part of the deal with crosswords, but this *kind* of "checking the crosses" becomes tedious. When you're doing it for YUP and GOBS and SO DO I—tedium. For some reason, all the green ink (I'm using a green pen now for puzzle mark-ups) is on the left side of my grid. Middle and left. The east is practically clean, so I must not have had too much trouble over there. I don't remember too much serious trouble, outside The LUD Incident—just a methodical plodding through the thorns and mire of Saturday cluing. Oh, A MUST, that made me struggle, then made me mad (25D: Something critical to have). That "A"—ugh. And right over A BIT. Bah. But otherwise, no particularly brutal spots; just normal Saturday resistance. 

Additional comments and explanations:

• 1A: Like the Galactic Empire and Rebel Alliance, in science fiction (AT WAR) — really wanted a single adjective here. Looking back, I shouldn't have abandoned this corner so readily. I had AWRY and YUP and kinda wanted WASP (3D: The fairyfly (the smallest known insect in the world) is one of them). Even wrote in ATE. But I couldn't make the Acrosses work, so I bailed, only to find out that all my initial guesses were in fact correct. Just couldn't make anything out of A-WA- here. ASWAN? Seriously, that's all I could see.
• 5D: Boastful Eminem title with the Guinness world record for "most words in a hit single" (1,560) ("RAP GOD") — Forgot this song, so at first I went with what seemed like a truly "Boastful" title: "I AM GOD"!
• 18A: "Freak on a Leash" band (KORN) — Yesterday I learned that "KORN" is also the title of a Gerhard Richter painting in the Guggenheim (this is what happens when you follow a Guggenheim bot on Bluesky):

["Korn," 1982]

• 23A: Loudly lachrymates (SOBS) — first thing I *confidently* put in the grid. Hurray for high school vocabulary tests!
• 45A: Reason to run in circles? (MEET) — so ... a track MEET, I assume. Tracks aren't actually "circles," but horseshoes / hand grenades / "?" clues.
• 55A: Beyond regulation, for short (IN OT) — "Regulation" is just the normally allotted amount of time to play a game. "OT" is, of course, "overtime."
• 59A: Takes orders (WAITS) — as in "WAITS tables."

• 4D: Took something with a grain of salt, maybe (ATE) — not hard, but come on. No one eats just one grain of salt. A very stupid misdirection attempt.
• 28D: Tackling group (D LINE) — Defensive line. The blocking group is the O LINE (Offensive line), which you also sometimes see in xwords.
• 9D: Squash or smoosh, maybe (STEP ON) — I had SHRINK. Not for long, but I had it. 
• 15D: "The Little Prince" trees (BAOBABS) — it's been a while since I read this so ... yikes. I barely know this tree type. Super-Saturday flora, for sure.
• 22D: They get down and dirty (ROOTS) — more tree stuff! (this clue is actually clever)
• 26D: Two-ingredient cocktail usually served with an olive or lemon twist (GIN MARTINI) — GIN MARTINI is redundant. Vodka, really? What are you doing?

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. [Grand] = THOU because “a grand” is slang for “a THOUsand” 🤓

*kealoa = a pair of words (normally short, common answers) that can be clued identically and that share at least one letter in common (in the same position). These are answers you can't just fill in quickly because two or more answers are viable, Even With One or More Letters In Place. From the classic [Mauna ___] KEA/LOA conundrum. See also, e.g. [Heaps] ATON/ALOT, ["Git!"] "SHOO"/"SCAT," etc.  

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Intestinal neighbors of jejuna and ceca / SAT 7-25-20 / One of fourteen holy helpers in Roman Catholicism / L in Broadway monogram LMM / Introducer of math symbol e / Pigs jocularly / Retailer that hired its first openly transgender model in 2019

Constructor: Royce Ferguson

Relative difficulty: Easy? I was not speeding and got up in the middle to do something, so I don't know...

THEME: none

Word of the Day: ST. VITUS (9D: One of the Fourteen Holy Helpers in Roman Catholicism) —

Vitus (/ˈvaɪtəs/), according to Christian legend, was a Christian saint from Sicily. He died as a martyr during the persecution of Christians by co-ruling Roman Emperors Diocletianand Maximian in 303. Vitus is counted as one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers of medieval Roman Catholicism. Saint Vitus' Day is celebrated on 15 June. In places where the Julian Calendar is used, this date coincides, in the 20th and 21st centuries, with 28 June on the Gregorian Calendar.

In the late Middle Ages, people in Germany celebrated the feast of Vitus by dancing before his statue. This dancing became popular and the name "Saint Vitus Dance" was given to the neurological disorder Sydenham's chorea. It also led to Vitus being considered the patron saint of dancers and of entertainers in general. (wikipedia)

• • •

This one lost me at "intestinal neighbors" and never got me back. Triple stacks on their own just aren't enough to hold my interest, and none of the long answers had any kind of currency or spark or vitality or novelty or anything. Puzzle felt like it was made in the 20th century and then someone got to it last week and added a few current / updated clues, but still ... no one's going to write home about CLOSED-BOOK TESTS or LEARN ONE'S LESSON. And the fill really suffers in places. Lots of short fill yesterday, but most of it held up; today, it fell apart a little bit more. I have the word "Yuck" written across the top of my grid *five* times. Now with ROD I was only mad at the clue (without "fishing" in front of it, ROD is horrible as an answer to [Bit of lakeside equipment]), and with AGNI I was mad because every time I've seen it in the past it's been a crosswordese Latin plural, so I instinctively recoiled, but ... it's a real-ass god, and not exactly a super-minor figure (like, say ST. VITUS—who?), so maybe I'll have to learn to at least tolerate the Hindu god AGNI. But I do not have to tolerate ILEA (yuck all around) or ENES, and SHE doesn't have a slash in it—see: SHE sells seashells down by the seashore. No slash. It *can* have a slash in it, I guess, though no one does that any more (singular "they" has triumphed). Because of all the yuck short fill and associated clues, and because none of the long answers gave a proper payoff when they came into view, the puzzle felt disappointing, and sadly nothing going on in the middle or bottom of the grid did much to change that.

AGNI clues of the Shortz era

I kept getting stalled on awkward pseudo-things like UNEDGED and TIE-WRAP. Remembered crosswordese COATI but half-forgot crosswordese ALTAI. Guessed right on crosswordese TOILE (TULLE is the tutu material, TUILE is ... a cookie, I think, and TOILE is upholstery). I don't accept that "L.M.M." is a "Broadway monogram"—I know who you're talking about, I saw "Hamilton" (and not on Disney+), but that "monogram" has not gotten beyond hardcore fandom, I don't think. At least today the ANO clue told you that you really do need the tilde. But it's still ANO, so pfft. Ugh to the Greek letter gimmick whereby XXX = CHIS. And ugh to -ARY. "IT'S HERE!" has a certain energy I like, but multiple KEATONS and multiple BONSAIS and too many other things just get me down. I was proud of how many of my first guesses on the short stuff were correct. VAST ILIA (misspelled, but still, close) SHE EEL RIPA ENES TESS INCA PELE and DEE, all correct. Oh, and INEXILE, boom, no crosses, nailed it (7D: Like the Dalai Lama since 1959). Of course all of this speed was offset by my total inability to see SEALED ENVELOPES (I had CLASS- at the beginning of 12D: Things for which you must memorize information and that Really hurt). [Know for the future] doesn't capture LEARN ONE'S LESSON at all. There's nothing that hints at the f***ing up you have to do in order to LEARN ONE'S LESSON. [Know for the future] just sounds like info you store away. No context. No sense of learning *the hard way*. I'm reminded all the time of how much better many of these puzzles would be with a more careful (and current) editorial voice. Oh well.


Mistakes? Hmm. ALL for ONE, ILIA for ILEA (again just awful), OAR for ROD. I think that's it. Not many at all. Many thanks to crossword stalwarts EULER and NAST and RIPA for easing my path through this thing.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

PS hey if you want to do a Beautiful (if very easy) themeless today, you should check out Caitlin Reid's latest New Yorker puzzle, which is lovely

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1969 hit for Neil Diamond / SUN 4-26-20 / Ad label in red white / 1990s Nickelodeon show about preteen boy / Early king of Athens in Greek myth / German city on Wesser / Like entire 290-page Georges Perec novel A Void curiously enough

Constructor: Royce Ferguson

Relative difficulty: Challenging (15-something, though I kept stopping because I just hated it so much, so it might be easier than the clock suggests)

THEME: "Turn, Turn, Turn" — the word "CAR" goes through a "tunnel" eight times, turning each time (the tunnels are L-shaped black-square formations). Technically, the visible parts of the answer (i.e. the non-CAR parts) look like standalone answers, though ... woof, ELESS, really? But I'm getting ahead of myself ... there's also a revealer for some reason: 47A: With 86-Across, fixation problem suggested by this puzzle's theme (TUNNEL / VISION); oh, and, again, redundantly and unnecessarily ... the word CAR (58D: The driving force behind this puzzle?):

Theme answers:

• "SWEET (CAR) OLINE" (1A: 1969 hit for Neil Diamond) (O-LINE = 23D: QB-protecting group, for short)
• MAS (CAR) PONE (25D: Cousin of cream cheese) (PONE = 13A: Southern bread)
• REIN (CAR) NATION (44A: Belief in Buddhism and Hinduism) (NATION = 54D: State)
• FLYING (CAR) PETS (48D: Magical rides) (PETS = 88A: Beloved members of the family)
• TAKE (CAR) EOF (59A: Deal with) (EOF = FOE = 36D: Adversary)
• DIS (CAR) DING (83D: Throwing away) (DING = 70A: Demerit)
• META(CAR)PAL (116A: Bone connected to the wrist) (PAL = LAP = 96D: ___ dog)
• COULD (CAR) ELESS (89D: Doesn't give a hoot, colloquially) (E-LESS = 119A: Like the entire 290-page Georges Perec novel "A Void," curiously enough)

Word of the Day: ASADO (90A: South American barbecue) —

Asado (Spanish: [aˈsaðo]) is the techniques and the social event of having or attending a barbecue in various South American countries, where it is also a traditional event. An asado usually consists of beef, pork, chicken, chorizo, and morcilla which are cooked on a grill, called a parrilla, or an open fire. Generally the meats are accompanied by red wine and salads. This meat is prepared by a person who is the assigned asador or parrillero. (wikipedia)

• • •

Dreary and dismal and painful and everything I've come to not like about Sunday puzzles, but also somehow worse. All the awful things are here. A puzzle that is superduper full of its own cleverness, despite being one-note—just CAR over and over and over. Fill that is pure garbage *posing* as inventive / fun stuff. XLSHIRT? Get the hell out of here. RADIOSHACKS, plural!?!? What's next, CHILISES? Rarely have I seen hotter garbage. MAKES A LIST!? ROLL A CIGAR!? It's like the puzzle is inching ever-closer to my Platonic ideal of that kind of answer: EAT(S) A SANDWICH. There are multiple XMASES now? This puzzle even made me hate a *baseball* answer, which ... do you know how hard you have to try to do that? And yet EX-MARINER, ugh. ___ A ___, EX-anyteam, XLwhatever. It's bad. It's not as bad as STEREOTYPIC, which, in recollecting it, makes me want to drop my computer on the floor, so offensive is that word's nonwordness. I seriously had STEREOTYP-- and no idea. Wrote in STEROTYPED, because that at least seemed like a word. There is no STEREOTYPIC without AL. Or there shouldn't be. In short, there was about as much GAYETY here as there is in that absolutely stupid non-word, which no one in the history of humanity has ever spelled that way, ever. Awful. Awful. Awful.


And the thing where a short three-letter *Down* is actually supposed to be read *backward* so you can go through the "tunnel"—more awfulness. I am going in the direction of the answer, i.e. Down. You cannot expect me to read the answer in an *upward* direction. Well, you can, 'cause you did. But it's bad. I ran the alphabet at SI_ only to realize that I was supposed to "drive" that answer up into the "tunnel" what fun!? So it's not SID, it's DIS(CAR)DING. GAYETY!  The nerve of this puzzle, not only trying to convince me that E-LESS (uuuuggggghhh) is a "word," but doing so with a stupid Georges Perec clue, which, so much ugh, is the guy whom I've only ever seen in crosswords and is such an insidery "we all love puzzley stuff right?" garbage garbage reference. The puzzle is only allowed to wink at me and commiserate with me in our shared puzzle fandom when the puzzle behaves and is actually good. When the puzzle is doing something cruddy, the winky nudge of a clue is Not welcome. BILOXIMS!? AnycityAnystatecode?! There's something to hate at every turn, and so much *long* hateful stuff, too. I picked this theme up early, and the revealer was transparent. See:

TUNNEL / VISION, early

And still the puzzle was hard and miserable to solve. Joyless. Smugly sure that it is chock full o' cleverness. Which makes the whole experience so much worse. ROLLACIGAR, I mean, really ... And ONARAIL, to boot!?!?! Yeesh. DEIS! ENLAI! STAID...NESS??? (52D: Sedate state). Good night.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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