With even stronger reasoning, in law / SAT 7-18-26 / Titular animated dog of children's TV / Nairobi-based collection of NGOs / Bygone recorders / Figures listed on Zocdoc, for short / Cosmetic additive that comes from the Southwest / Smartphone feature that debuted worldwide in 2011 / Song whose titular subject has a "dark brown voice" / Retailer with mountains in its logo / Instrument that's held at about a 45-degree angle from the player's body

Constructor: Ryan Judge

Relative difficulty: Easy 

[33D: Actor who plays the title role on TV's "Andor"]

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Moe Berg (59A: W.W. II-era occupation for baseball's Moe Berg, following his playing career = SPY) —

Morris Berg (May 3, 1902 – May 29, 1972) was an American professional baseball catcher and coach in Major League Baseball who later served as a spy for the Office of Strategic Services during World War II. He played 15 seasons in the major leagues, almost entirely for four American League teams, though he was never more than an average player and was better known for being "the brainiest guy in baseball." Casey Stengel once described Berg as "the strangest man ever to play baseball."

Berg was a graduate of Princeton University and Columbia Law School, spoke several languages, and regularly read ten newspapers a day. His reputation as an intellectual was fueled by his successful appearances as a contestant on the radio quiz show Information Please, in which he answered questions about the etymology of words and names from Greek and Latin, historical events in Europe and the Far East, and ongoing international conferences.

As a spy working for the government of the United States, Berg traveled to Yugoslavia to gather intelligence on resistance groups which the U.S. government was considering supporting. He was sent on a mission to Italy, where he interviewed various physicists concerning the German nuclear weapons program. After the war, Berg was occasionally employed by the Central Intelligence Agency, successor to the Office of Strategic Services. (wikipedia)

• • •

[20D: Gustav Klimt masterpiece]

Hey, my Friday puzzle! A day late, but still, better late than never. This one had the flow and the oomph and the zing, as well as the lowkey fighting spirit, that yesterday's puzzle lacked. Give me a grid with all-over flow like this over a series of 15-stacks Any Day. More challenge, more fun today. Not really a Saturday-level challenge, but enough resistance to make it interesting, at least. You only get a couple of answers 10+-letters long (two 13s, to be exact, both great), but you do a get a host of 7-8-9s, which keep things crackling throughout, and while there's plenty of short fill to help you get traction, you never feel like you're drowning in it (which is how I felt yesterday when practically everything besides the puzzle's nine 15s was short filler). Today's puzzle is a little too pop-culturey for my tastes, but there was nothing obscure, to my mind, nothing that I hadn't picked up from either paying attention to the world generally or solving crosswords, specifically (everything I know about Elio and Andor, for instance, I learned from (writing about) crosswords). The puzzle covers a wide range of topics and moves from formal (A FORTIORI) to informal ("I JUST WORK HERE"). Fresh and surprising. Just what I like in a late-week puzzle. 

[7D: Results of one's labors, so to speak]

It wasn't a long journey today, from start to finish, but it was ... a journey. Please, come along with me, won't you, as I retrace my eventful and occasionally hilarious path to puzzle completion. Let's start in the NW corner, where we usually start, and where I made my first and possibly only outright mistake. And what a mistake it was. A gift from the gods! How often are mistakes gifts? Well, OOXTEPLERNON (the god of short bad fill, hallowed be his name) was uncharacteristically playful and generous today. He offered me a regrettable French possessive as my opening toehold (14D: "Bonjour, ___ amis!" = MES). Not an auspicious beginning, but what followed was ... epic. Historic. I was so proud that I remembered the [Nairobi-based collection of NGOs] (OXFAM). That "X" gave me "EXCUSE ME" (2D: "Um ... what?!") and so I was off and running ... or so I thought. My next move, however ... fatal. Silent, but deadly, you might say. You see, I crossed the "E" in MES not with SCORE (the correct answer) but with SCALE (17A: Conductor's reference). In retrospect, SCORE is soooo much better, but my brain was like "music, five letters, ends in "E" ... [pictures sheet music ... a progression of notes] ... SCALE! By dumb luck, SCALE and SCORE end up sharing 60% of the same letter DNA. So I "confirm" SCALE with TO SPARE, so now SCALE is really locked in ... which sets the stage for perhaps the greatest wrong answer I've ever entered into a grid—any grid, ever. Now, I don't know much about Latin legal terms, but I was pretty sure that this ... was wrong:

Lawyers, judges: I demand that one of you use "A FARTIRIORI" the next time you object to some line of argument on the grounds that it stinks. "Objection, your honor! A FARTIRIORI reasoning!" "Sustained! Clear the court!" Maybe you can work MALIO in there too, when the reasoning is particularly bad-faith. "A MALIO FARTIORI, your honor! I demand a retrial! Contempt of court!" Oh, man, A FARTIRIORI, I love you so much. Thank you for appearing to me in a crossword. What a blessing. 

Another great thing about the FARTIRIORI error is that I was able to catch it immediately, so it didn't bog me down. A lot easier to laugh at your mistakes when you catch them quickly. With the NW fixed, I zoomed into the center of the grid, for the first big whoosh of the day. I briefly considered EMOJIKEPEDIA (?) for 30A: Smartphone feature that debuted worldwide in 2011, but then ... success.

At this point, I had a toehold in the NE, and pretty good prospects for getting down into the SW and across the grid to the SE. This was the point at which the good answers felt like they started popping off like popcorn, in all directions. "I JUST WORK HERE," STUDY DATE, WIDE BERTH, etc. Not that there weren't some hiccups along the way. I misread "Zocdoc" (?) as "Zodiac" and so really really didn't understand when MDS ended up being the answer to 16D: Figures listed on Zocdoc, for short. I saw the -B-RT pattern at 26A and instinctively wrote in EBERT before deciding maybe I should actually read the clue and discovering that it was actually Q*BERT (26A: Orange video game character who appears in "Wreck-It-Ralph"). You ever watch the cartoon "Letterman" on the Electric Company back in the day? (this was the '70s, so you pretty much have to be over 50 for this). He was a superhero figure who would save the day by changing a letter in the name of something scary or bad, thereby rendering it harmless. Like turning a "gun" into "gum" or something. Anyway, I'm imagining Letterman changing EBERT into Q*BERT and it's making me happy.

Bullets:

• 31D: Cosmetic additive that comes from the Southwest (JOJOBA OIL) — I took one look at JOJO-, before looking at the clue, and the only thing I could imagine was JOJO DANCER (Your Life Is Calling). Luckily, I remembered JOJOBA OIL from ... I wanna say '70s shampoo commercials?

• 43A: Digs up by the roots (GRUBS) — this ... is not a word I know. I think of GRUBS as larvae. 
• 46D: Bygone recorders (TIVOS) — Today I learned that TIVOS are "bygone," LOL, wow, when did that happen. I rely on crosswords for all my TIVO-related information, so this is the first I'm hearing of it.
• 57A: What might add a bit of flavor to a salsa? (BONGO) — since I was having trouble coming up with EMBRYOS (39D: Items frozen in cryopreservation), I didn't have the final "O" here and thought that maybe people were livening up their salsa dancing by taking hits off of BONGS. Really adds flavor, they say!

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

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
=============================
❤️ Support this blog ❤️: 

• Venmo (@MichaelDavidSharp)]

=============================
📘 My other blog 📘:

• Pop Sensation (vintage paperbacks)

Read more...

R-V guy? / SAT 11-8-25 / Overseer of Artemis / Accessory with a grid of numbers / Lucas's younger sister on "Stranger Things" / Phrase spoken by a dog in a burning room, in a 2010s meme / John Coltrane album whose title suggests making major progress / Mali Empire ruler who single-handedly made the value of gold almost worthless by giving away so much of it / Largest Bengali-speaking city in the world

Constructor: Ryan Judge

Relative difficulty: Extremely easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: A.E. Housman (32A: "Then it was well with me, in days ___ I was born": Housman) —

Alfred Edward Housman (/ˈhaʊsmən/; 26 March 1859 – 30 April 1936) was an English classical scholar and poet. He showed early promise as a student at the University of Oxford, but he failed the final examination in literae humaniores and took employment as a patent examiner in London in 1882. In his spare time he engaged in textual criticism of classical Greek and Latin texts and his publications as an independent researcher earned him a high academic reputation and appointment as professor of Latin at University College London in 1892. In 1911 he was appointed Kennedy Professor of Latin in the University of Cambridge. He is regarded as one of the foremost classicists of his age and one of the greatest classical scholars. His editions of Juvenal, Manilius, and Lucan are still considered authoritative.

In 1896, Housman published A Shropshire Lad, a cycle of poems marked by the author's pessimism and preoccupation with early death, which gradually acquired a wide readership and appealed particularly to a younger audience during World War I. Another collection, entitled Last Poems, appeared in 1922. Housman's poetry became popular for musical settings. Following his death, further poems from his notebooks were published by his brother Laurence.[...] 

In 1942, Laurence Housman also deposited an essay entitled "A. E. Housman's 'De Amicitia'" in the British Library, with the proviso that it was not to be published for 25 years. The essay discussed A. E. Housman's homosexuality and his love for Moses Jackson. Despite the conservative nature of the times and his own caution in public life, Housman was quite open in his poetry, and especially in A Shropshire Lad, about his deeper sympathies.

• • •

This didn't look like a Saturday from the beginning, from before I started. The grid did not have anything about it that looked daunting. No fat corners or other wide open spaces. Black squares everywhere. Chopped up to look like a midweek puzzle rather than a themeless. Turns out it's a 72-worder, the putative maximum for themeless puzzles, and high word-count puzzles tend to be easier than low word-count puzzles, all other things being equal (which they never are, but you get the basic idea). I figured the puzzle was just tricking me, trying to lull me into complacency before crushing me with smashing Saturday blows. But no. Not even close. This puzzle could not throw a punch to save its life. 1-Across IOWA, 1-Down ISBN, and away we go. 

I've got maybe half a dozen things marked on my grid that gave me some hesitation, but nothing at all that I really struggled with, beyond that one proper noun that, familiarity-wise is from outer space—the outlieriest of outliers: MANSA MUSA (59A: Mali Empire ruler who single-handedly made the value of gold almost worthless by giving away so much of it). I confess that I have never heard or seen that name before, and that that answer may as well have been a string of random letters; and yet somehow it didn't matter. Everything else was so easy that I just washed right over that answer and finally brought it down with ERICA (44D: Lucas's younger sister on "Stranger Things"): the closest thing that the puzzle has to a genuinely tough crossing. While parts of this were fun and made me smile (remembering old music, remembering old memes), the lack of difficulty was dispiriting. If any day is gonna try to tear my face off, it's supposed to be Saturday. No threat of face-tearing today. This puzzle merely pawed at it. Like my cat trying to wake me up in the morning. Equal parts cute and annoying. I think the puzzle itself is decent, but it should've run on a Friday (even if it felt, difficulty-wise, more like a Wednesday). Running this on Saturday? NOT OK (not NOT OKAY, which, as an answer, is NOT OK).

The highlights for me today were GIANT STEPS (26A: John Coltrane album whose title suggests making major progress) and "THIS IS FINE" (11D: Phrase spoken by a dog in a burning room, in a 2010s meme). I particularly liked the fact that "THIS IS FINE" runs right through NEIL (not NEAL) Gorsuch, a member of that feckless branch of government that is not interested in the concept of checks and balances and is happy to watch the world burn (that is, to watch the other two branches burn the world). Normally wouldn't be happy to see Gorsuch in the puzzle or anywhere, but today: good job, puzzle. You got me to enjoy seeing his name. There was some pleasing cluing in this puzzle too. I ultimately liked the clue for SHORTSTOP (13A: One who's off base?); my first thought was "none of the infielders actually stand on the damn bases!" [caveat caveat] but then I thought "OK, the only infield position that doesn't have 'base' actually in its title is SHORTSTOP ... yeah, that works." Speaking of baseball, I also liked the OHIO clue (2D: Red state?), mainly because it took me a bit to realize it was dealing with baseball (the Cincinnati Reds play in the state of OHIO) (yes, OHIO is, these days, typically a "Red State" on the U.S. electoral map, but that "?" means there's wordplay afoot). I like that the puzzle took a mythological clue into cephalopod territory. That was unexpected, and even though I've never heard of the cephalopods in question, the clue made it easy to infer once I had ARGO-. The puzzle's other mythological clue had me slightly off balance for a bit as well. I had -A-A and briefly assumed that 53D: Overseer of Artemis (NASA) was GAIA (!?) (personification of Earth, "Mother of the Gods"). 

I got the Housman clue easily (32A: "Then it was well with me, in days ERE I was born": Housman), but only because the missing word was easy to infer, not because I knew the poem in question. Here's the poem in question. It's a grim take on the idea of this world as a vale of tears (or a waking nightmare—the opposite of "THIS IS FINE," really):

Be still, my soul, be still; the arms you bear are brittle, 
   Earth and high heaven are fixt of old and founded strong. 
Think rather,—call to thought, if now you grieve a little, 
   The days when we had rest, O soul, for they were long. 

Men loved unkindness then, but lightless in the quarry 
   I slept and saw not; tears fell down, I did not mourn; 
Sweat ran and blood sprang out and I was never sorry: 
   Then it was well with me, in days ere I was born. 

Now, and I muse for why and never find the reason, 
   I pace the earth, and drink the air, and feel the sun. 
Be still, be still, my soul; it is but for a season: 
   Let us endure an hour and see injustice done. 

Ay, look: high heaven and earth ail from the prime foundation; 
   All thoughts to rive the heart are here, and all are vain: 
Horror and scorn and hate and fear and indignation—
   Oh why did I awake? when shall I sleep again? [A Shropshire Lad, XLVIII (1896)]

Bullet points:

• 5A: R-V guy? (STU) — groan and eye roll ("S" "T" and "U" are the letters between "R" and "V" in the alphabet). This is one of the oldest "?" clues in the book (And I'm pretty sure I've seen that SPARE TIRES clue before, too (10D: Fifth wheels?)). My friend Lena and I will have to agree to disagree on this one :)

• 17A: Accessory with a grid of numbers (BINGO CARD) — "Accessory"? LOL, what? I don't wear it around my neck or wrist or around my waist, so ... come on. I honestly thought the answer was going to be some BINDI variation that I was unaware of.
• 37A: "You're not just imagining that tone" ("I HEAR IT") — I thought the tone was the speaker's own, so I put in "I MEAN IT" at first.
• 60A: Largest Bengali-speaking city in the world (DHAKA) — capital of Bangladesh, population over 10 million (closer to 24 million in the greater metro area).

• 6D: Shortening for a city that omits "onto" (TOR) — so dopey that I like it.
• 7D: John who won a National Book Award for this novel "The Centaur" (UPDIKE) — I know the author's name well, but I've somehow never heard of this novel. Writing in the New York Review of Books, Jonathan Miller described The Centaur (1964) as "a poor novel irritatingly marred by good features" (wikipedia).

• 28D: Sellout letters (SRO) — stands (!) for "Standing Room Only" (one of those Broadway-related terms I learned from crosswords very early on). SRO can also stand for "Single-Room Occupancy," describing a kind of cheap extended-stay hotel, but you don't see that clue much any more.
• 36D: Fella (BUB) — this answer went through the most incarnations. Started as GUY (I had the "U"), and then went to BUD before finally ending up as BUB.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
=============================
❤️ Support this blog ❤️: 

• Venmo (@MichaelDavidSharp)]

=============================
✏️ Upcoming Crossword Tournaments ✏️

• American Crossword Puzzle Tournament (Stamford, CT, Apr. 10-12, 2026) (registration opens January 8!)

=============================
📘 My other blog 📘:

• Pop Sensation (vintage paperbacks)

Read more...

Stuff boiled in sugar shacks / SAT 8-23-25 / Island in a classic video game / Product pitched by a pitcher / Relative of upward dog / International grocery chain founded in Germany / One's primary character, in video game lingo / White House daughter of the 1960s-'70s / Rapper whose father is the jazz musician Olu Dara

Constructor: Ryan Judge

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: SAM Hill (42A: ___ Hill) —

Sam Hill is an American English slang phrase, a euphemism or minced oath for "the devil" or "hell" personified (as in, "What in the Sam Hill is that?"). Etymologist Michael Quinion and others date the expression back to the late 1830s; they and others consider the expression to have been a simple bowdlerization, with, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, an unknown origin. [...] H. L. Mencken suggested that the phrase derives from Samiel, the name of the Devil in Der Freischütz, an opera by Carl Maria von Weber that was performed in New York City in 1825. The phrase "Sa' m Hill" can also be seen in the variant "Samil". (wikipedia)

• • •

Nice, if too easy for a Saturday. I particularly like the OHIO RIVER flowing into the very strong SE corner—VEGAN BACON, EVIL GENIUS, RESCUE CAT, colorful phrases one and all. The overall fill quality today is about equal to yesterday—the highs are maybe not as high, but the lows are not as low (this one's lighter on tiresome short stuff). I got very distracted by the central marquee phrase today, though. I could tell it was gonna start "MY," and then later I filled in some of the latter part of the answer, and I could see that it was gonna be "MY ___ HERE IS DONE," but for me the word that wants to go there, that really really wants to go there, is WORK. I wrote in "JOB" because I had the "B" from KNOB but ... I didn't like it. Of course "JOB" makes sense, if you said it, no one would fail to understand your meaning, but the phrase as I know it has "WORK," not "JOB." It's rare that I stop mid-puzzle to investigate an answer, but I did here, and promptly fell down a weird rabbit hole that involved a. finding out that "MY JOB HERE IS DONE" is the phrasing on a popular meme using stills from Sailor Moon (even though the line "MY JOB HERE IS DONE" is not uttered in the actual TV show); b. finding out that said meme continues with the response (attributed to Sailor herself), "But you didn't do anything"; c. *knowing* that this exchange was lifted from the Monorail episode of The Simpsons, where it takes place between Barney and Leonard Nimoy, only with Leonard Nimoy saying "MY WORK HERE IS DONE"; d. finding out that I was both right about that ... and (slightly) wrong. Leonard Nimoy doesn't say "MY WORK HERE IS DONE." He says, "MY WORK IS DONE HERE." Then Barney says "But you didn't do anything." And then ... well, here:

And here's the Sailor Moon meme:

And here is a genuinely fascinating recent article on the history of the phrase "MY WORK HERE IS DONE," that covers a lot of ground, including the collective misremembering of the phrase as a sign-off on the TV show The Lone Ranger. So, in conclusion, "MY WORK HERE IS DONE" is probably the more common and certainly older phrase (googles 2x "JOB"); the "JOB" version appears to have been popularized by a meme; the text of that meme is basically lifted from The Simpsons; my memory of the Simpsons phrase put the "HERE" in the wrong place. After learning all this, I realized "oh ****, I still have half the puzzle left to finish." And so I went back and did it. 

This puzzle gave too much away (to me) right off the bat, with the cross reference in 1A: Relative of upward dog, to 50-Down (COBRA POSE). Even though I wasn't certain about COBRA POSE, I could tell from the clue that 50-Down would be YOGIS. "Upward dog" is a yoga pose, so ... it's the only logical 5-letter answer there. I put POSE in at 1A and tested it, and it passed. Then I put YOGIS in and it passed. Here's my very weird-ass opening gambit:

Then I put in COBRA, and ... same. When you get the first letters of alllll the Downs up top, right off the bat, well, you're in a good position. And sure enough, things went very smoothly from there on out, with only tiny bumps along the way. I have no idea whose "motto" CARPE noctem is, but I needed several crosses there. Wasn't entirely sure what incarnation of ESPN was gonna be involved at 9D: Place to hear game results and analysis (ESPN RADIO) ("hear" should've tipped me off, lol). I misspelled Steve YEUN's name (as YUEN). I thought the "pitcher" in 31A: Product pitched by a pitcher (KOOL-AID) was an "ad man" (that is, the advertiser themselves), and not a literal pitcher (of KOOL-AID). Wanted SHIPS before STANS (47D: Is really into, in slang) (if you're really into a couple—in a book or movie or TV series—you SHIP them). And finally, I just didn't know MAIN, although, yeah, I can infer why you'd call it that (61A: One's primary character, in video game lingo). Coulda just shortened the clue to [Primary], but OK, sure, video games, knock yourself out.

Some more thoughts:

• 15A: International grocery chain founded in Germany (ALDI) — ALDI is having a crossword moment. It debuted in 2020, didn't appear again til four years later, but now has appeared three times already this year. In the olden days (pre-2020?) you'd've just made this (Alan) ALDA and forgotten about it. Some would argue that's what you should've done here. I am agnostic on this issue. 
• 18A: Rapper whose father is the jazz musician Olu Dara (NAS) — I got this off "Rapper." Just as EDAM is (per Drew Carey) "crossword puzzle cheese," so NAS is "crossword puzzle rapper" (there are some others, but in three letters, not many). Note: OLU DARA has never been in the NYTXW, despite that catnip first name. OLU appeared once, forty years ago, but then it was clued as [___ Malau, Solomons group]—classic old-school geographic obscurity!

• 55A: Type of alcoholic beverage that originated in the U.K., despite its name (IPA) — more IPA news! I see what the clue is doing with "despite its name," but since India was a British colony, it's not like the British origins of the name are exactly a shocker.
• 23D: Japanese company whose products click with customers (NIKON) — cameras. Kind of bold to leave the "?" off this clue, considering the misdirective wordplay, but I guess the clue is literal enough that it doesn't need one (esp. on a Saturday)
• 26D: Composer of "In the Hall of the Mountain King" (GRIEG) — coincidentally, listened to GRIEG's Piano Concerto in A minor yesterday. I put my entire Apple Music library on "Shuffle" and that's what came up first.

• 51D: Cute sound? (LONG "U") — a "letteral" clue, here referring to the "u" in the word "Cute" (that "u" is a diphthong (eeyoo) but the "u" is still long) (an example of a short "u" would be the "u" in "cut")
• 45D: White House daughter of the 1960s-'70s (TRICIA) — initially went with the Yearwood spelling, TRISHA.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
=============================
❤️ Support this blog ❤️: 

• Venmo (@MichaelDavidSharp)]

=============================
✏️ Upcoming Crossword Tournaments ✏️

• Midwest Crossword Tournament (Chicago) (Sat., Oct. 4, 2025)
• Finger Lakes Crossword Competition (Ithaca) (Sat., Oct. 18, 2025)

=============================
📘 My other blog 📘:

• Pop Sensation (vintage paperbacks)

Read more...

End part of a violin bow / SAT 5-17-25 / Type that's compatible with everyone, in brief / Sitcom set in a corner store run by a Korean Canadian family (2016-21) / Museum with works by Hockney, Turner and Millais / First president of the S.C.L.C. / Something to take in from a boat / Humiliated (or honored), as on Nickelodeon / Chain whose name came from a Boston hotel whose sign was too expensive to remove / Sultanate that controls the exclave of Madha

Constructor: Ryan Judge

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (more Easy than Medium)

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Pete ALONSO (62A: M.L.B. star Pete who holds the single-season record for homers by a rookie (53)) —

Peter Morgan Alonso (born December 7, 1994), nicknamed "Polar Bear", is an American professional baseball first baseman for the New York Mets of Major League Baseball (MLB). Internationally, Alonso represents the United States.

Alonso played college baseball for the Florida Gators before the Mets selected him in the 2016 MLB draft. He made his MLB debut on Opening Day in 2019 and won the National League Rookie of the Year Award that year, setting a major league record for rookies with 53 home runs. Alonso is a four-time MLB All-Star who led the league in home runs in 2019 and in runs batted in in 2022. He has also won the MLB Home Run Derby twice, in 2019 and 2021. (wikipedia)

• • •

Not enough good marquee fill for my taste. Stuff like ONE TO TEN and EATS A LOT is just a terrible waste of long answers. See also MINIMART. Boring. Too much of that, not enough good stuff. Also, and I say this as a sports fan (of sorts): too much sports. You can put whatever you want in a grid, but you shouldn't stay in one pocket of trivia for too long, and this one Really hangs out in the sports pocket. From the ACC (which I assumed was the AFC) (12D: Miami is in it, for short), to LAKER (basketball) (1D: Athlete who shares his home venue with the Sparks), ARI (football) (21A: Cards' home), RAVENS (football) (53A: N.F.L. team whose name is a literary reference) (Poe!), ALONSO (baseball), ASTROS (baseball) (48D: Team whose logo contains an "H" on top of a star). This stuff wasn't hard for me, but I could feel myself getting annoyed by the same-same-ness. I just kept thinking "OK, move along." If the marquee stuff had been banging, it's likely I wouldn't have gotten so put off by the sports trivia avalanche. Which is why you have One Job in a themeless—make the marquee answers *interesting*. Flashy, elegant, original, something. Not just a few of them—almost all of them. And then make the rest of your fill smooth and (important) *varied*. I mean, this is an entirely adequate Saturday, and it's got some highlights for sure, but it didn't feel special enough for the NYTXW. It's got diagonal symmetry, though, so if you're a fan of that ... there's that.

Some people will love KIM'S CONVENIENCE because they love KIM'S CONVENIENCE. It's certainly marquee-worthy, and original. I've never seen the show, but I'm aware of its existence, so it was a huge gimme up top, which really helped move the solve along. The only longer answer I actively *liked* though, were... "SO THAT'S THAT," that was pretty nice. SPILL THE TEA is OK, but I feel like I've heard it so much that it sounds more "cliché" than "original" now. "ANY ADVICE?" is nice, though the clue felt a little awkward to me (15A: Tip line?) (a "line" you might say if you wanted some "tips," I get it, but I don't love it. Not sure why, but "line" doesn't strike me as sincerely interrogative. I mean, "what's your sign?" or "come here often?" are certainly "lines" in the "bad bar come-ons from the '70s" sense, and those are questions, technically, but a practical, earnest question that isn't about hitting on someone ... I just wouldn't call that a "line."). Hate the idea of doing any advertising for anything related to Bezos, so SAME-DAY DELIVERY was an actively negative experience for me (3D: Prime choice). FLYING SOUTH is fine but only if the clue is related to birds, which this one wasn't (31A: Going down, in a way). That BANANA SPLIT clue was certainly Saturday-hard, but again, the "humor" on the clue felt forced, and in this case, oddly old-timey. Is anyone calling the dish a BANANA SPLIT comes in a "boat" any more? Were they ever? Gravy comes in boats. I don't think much else does, food-wise (6D: Something to take in from a boat). Since a "banana boat" is an actual thing (or a brand of sunscreen, at least), it took me a long time to get my "boat" out of the water and into the ice cream parlor.

[FLYING SOUTH]

The only hard part of the puzzle for me was the FROG / O NEG crossing (31D: End part of a violin bow / 39A: Type that's compatible with everyone, in brief). I cannot keep track of what all the blood types do or don't do. Some letter, POS or NEG, whatever you say. I just work that stuff out from crosses. But when that single letter (here, the "O") is not crystal clear in the cross, then yikes—trouble. And today, it couldn't have been less clear. A part of a violin I've literally never heard of??? Ugh. I sincerely thought this was some non-violent way of cluing FRAG, and A NEG seemed ... plausible? But then I thought "what monster would use FRAG when FROG is right there? I'm going to assume the constructor is not a monster, and guess FROG, even though that is the dumbest violin bow-part name I can imagine, and FRAG actually seems like a better guess were it not for the cross." So I guessed FROG and was right. Bad editing. Don't do that. With initials and other single letters that aren't guaranteed gimmes, cross them clearly. The FROG today should've been amphibious. Or the kind you get in your throat. You can make the clue hard, just don't make it totally inscrutable (no way to get from violin bow to FROG by inference of any kind). 


Bullets:

• 24A: Humiliated (or honored), as on Nickelodeon (SLIMED) —do they still "slime" people on Nickelodeon? The clue feels bygone and kind of corny. "Unfortunately, sliming ain’t what it used to be.  With the so-called “Glory Days” of Nickelodeon waning (num​bers took a sharp downturn in 2012), slime has been relegated to award sho​ws and YouTu​be clips. The Nickelodeon Studios theme park, where kids could go to get slimed in real life, was shut down in 2004. The only place to get doused in green goo seems to be a N​ickelodeon-themed resort in Orlando where water-park games include the occasional sliming" (vice.com). If you absolutely positively have to use "slime" as a verb, make it a Ghostbusters clue. Please.

• 38D: Chain whose name came from a Boston hotel whose sign was too expensive to remove (SHERATON) — absolutely no idea. Why is this a good clue? It's not good trivia? The clue has Absolutely Nothing in it that suggests SHERATON specifically. In an elaborate trivia clue like this, you expect some part of that clue to be hinting at, at least faintly suggesting, the content of the answer. But SHERATON is just ... a name? Nothing about it says "Boston" or "expensive sign." It's like you took the most boring fact about a hotel chain you could think of and made it the clue. If you're going to reach into obscure trivia for your clue, give us something good. Please.
• 62A: M.L.B. star Pete who holds the single-season record for homers by a rookie (53) (ALONSO) — I know I complained about "too much sports" but I was really complaining about "too much of one thing," not sports per se. Personally, I loved seeing Petey's name here. Polar Bear! I got to seem him play a couple of times when he was on the Mets' Double-A affiliate, which happens to be my hometown team: the Binghamton Rumble Ponies. On one amazing summer day six years ago I got to see both Pete ALONSO and Vlad Guerrero on the same field, with both of them hitting towering home runs. You could tell just by looking at them that those two were on another planet from everyone else on the field. ALONSO hit the ball So Hard. What I remember most, though, is his rear-end thickness. Just a massive ass and thigh region (he played 1st and our seats were in the outfield down the 1st base line, so I had a very good view). Not fat. Powerful. A truly impressive power source.

• 41D: Part of a cold pack? (KLEENEX) — again, this puzzle's ear for "?" clues feels very tinny. Yes, I get it, when you have a "cold" you might reach for a "pack" of KLEENEX. It works on some basic wordplay level. But the surface level of the clue just doesn't zing. I got this easily because the "X" was in place before I ever saw the clue. But yeah, I'm just mad at the "?" clues and other wordplay misdirection today. Just doesn't seem clever or elegant enough. Defensible, but semi-tortured.

I will confess to not being in the best mood as I write this, as I am still recovering from surgery and thus still in a decent amount of pain (the pain is managed, but not yet extinguished, to my great annoyance and impatience) (so many "cold packs"!). If you want to heap laurels on this puzzle, be my guest. I'm sure it's got virtues that I'm just not noticing. Like I said, it seemed fine, but NYTXW puzzles should be more than fine. 

Thanks so much to Mali and Rafa for filling in for me the past few days. I'm grateful to have them there when I need them. That's all—see you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

Read more...