Nickname for Britain's King Edward VII / SUN 4-5-26 / Article of jewelry worn around the biceps / Alice of TV's "Queen of the South" / Sax player Clarence / Grande's perfume line / Showbiz "grand slam," familiarly / Our planes don't have seats! / Our soap is deadly! / Something well-taken? / Second first lady, after Martha / Japanese healing discipline / Hagar the Horrible's dog / First college in the modern era to boast a 15-0 football team

Constructor: Samuel A. Donaldson

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: "Badvertising" — familiar phrases clued as if they were bad advertising slogans:

Theme answers:

• FREE ENTERPRISE (23A: We're literally giving away our rental cars!)
• NO PAIN NO GAIN (30A: It hurts how much we're overcharging for this detergent!)
• UNITED WE STAND (57A: Our planes don't have seats!)
• APPLE CRUMBLES (80A: Our tech products fall apart easily!)
• LIFETIME BANS (105A: Our cable channel is devoted to censorship!)
• JUST TAKE A GUESS (115A: Go ahead and shoplift one pair of our jeans!)
• DON'T TOUCH THAT DIAL (2D: Our soap is deadly!)
• US AGAINST THE WORLD (34D: Our magazine hates everything and everyone!)

Word of the Day: Alice BRAGA (83D: Alice of TV's "Queen of the South") —

Alice Braga Moraes (Brazilian Portuguese pronunciation: [aˈlisi ˈbɾaɡɐ moˈɾajs]; born April 15, 1983) is a Brazilian actress and producer. She gained international recognition for her role as Anna Montez in the American science fiction film I Am Legend (2007), opposite Will Smith. Braga has since built a successful career in Hollywood, appearing in films such as Blindness (2008), Predators (2010), Elysium (2013), and The Suicide Squad (2021). From 2016 to 2021, she starred as Teresa Mendoza in the American television series Queen of the South. In addition to her acting career, she has worked as a producer and remains an influential figure in both Brazilian and international cinema. In 2024, she starred in the Apple TV+ science fiction series Dark Matter. (wikipedia) // Queen of the South is an American crime drama television series developed by M.A. Fortin and Joshua John Miller. The series premiered on June 23, 2016, and concluded on June 9, 2021, with 62 episodes aired on USA Network. It is an adaptation of the Spanish-language telenovela La Reina del Sur which airs on USA's sister network Telemundo; both are adapted from the novel The Queen of the South by Spanish author Arturo Pérez-Reverte. (wikipedia)

• • •

I don't think most of these work very well, but I want to single out two that do. Can you "single" out two things? Seems weird, but I'm just gonna go with it. First, "DON'T TOUCH THAT DIAL!" The base phrase is real (dated, sure, but real), and it's colorful, and (most importantly) the phrase is genuinely hilarious as an advertising slogan for Dial. Just directly telling you "do not buy this." Plus, the clue is concise and punchy! (2D: Our soap is deadly!). It works on every level. Nothing feels strange or contrived. Even better was "UNITED WE STAND!" That one got an actual LOL from me. It's doubly hilarious to me because you have to mentally repunctuate it: "United: We Stand!" And again, the clue is a model of concision (57A: Our planes don't have seats!). The image it conjures up is also funny. No need to board by section, just pile in! Lethal soap, pretty funny; seatless planes, very funny. So, two of these really hit the "Badvertising" spot (spot!). The rest all have something wonky about them, something that makes them feel either slightly or very off, or forced, or awkward. LIFETIME BANS? Like ... bans what? How? Why? It makes no sense without detail. Nobody ever called a pair of Guess jeans "A GUESS." Apple products crumble, OK, but saying the company as a whole crumbles is too vague, too abstract. FREE ENTERPRISE works OK, but it doesn't sound terrible, the way lethal soap and seatless planes sound terrible. People would actually use Enterprise if it were free—they just wouldn't make money. Seems ... different from the others. And less funny. NO PAIN, NO GAIN needs a convoluted clue to work; "PAIN" is (again) too abstract for "paying too much"—would be much funnier if the clue imagined that customers had to experience some kind of literal pain, like an anvil falling on their heads or their hair being pulled or the like. As for US AGAINST THE WORLD ... I dunno. People like magazines that "hate" on things. And anyway, isn't the phrase "you and me against the world?" Or is that just the Helen Reddy song running interference in my brain? Looks like Coldplay has a song called "US AGAINST THE WORLD," and the Coldplay version is (unsurprisingly) googling ~6x better than the Helen Reddy version. Even if I accept the phrase, as a themer, it doesn't strike me as particularly funny, or apt. So ... the theme is two for eight. Batting .250. Decent in baseball. Not great in crosswords.

The fill was a little rough. And occasionally just ... odd. ENTER ON? RAH RAH BAH! (all three of those answers are glued together into one wet lump). OSTEOID!? There's a word I've never seen! (25A: Resembling bone). I had the OSTE- part (familiar to me from crosswords crosswords crosswords!) and had no idea what to do with the rest. Tried OSTEOUS at first. The clue seemed adjectival, and "-OUS" is an adjectival ending, so why not? Well, because it's wrong, that's why not (for the record, OSSEOUS means "composed of, containing, or resembling bone; bony"). Have you heard of the new nature-inspired form of energy healing? It's called REIKI BAAING. I hear it's amazing. You do it IN LATIN (again, all three of these answers are wadded into a DAMPISH mass) (DAMPISH sold separately). I didn't even know sheep spoke Latin, but Virgil spoke Latin, and he wrote about sheep sometimes, so ... by the transitive property of Latin, etc. Moving on. DOHA ANOS TATAS ASI! ERATO EGOT! ASSISI as pie, if you speak crosswordese. Haven't seen a grid this SNERTy in ... oh, multiple two-year periods of time ... what would you call those? ... Pfft, I forget. Anyway, the connective tissue on this one could've been smoother, prettier, more polished, etc. Is the CLEMONS / CLEMSON crossing a joke? A wink? Performance art? I actually think it's one of the more interesting parts of the grid (77D: Sax player Clarence / 77A: First college in the modern era to boast a 15-0 football team). CLEMONS drops the "S" back two spaces and bam, CLEMSON! High-end GOOFINESS (again, and for the last time, all three of these answers are locked in unholy embrace). 

The slow parts were all the parts I mentioned in the previous paragraph, plus ARMLET (whatever that is), plus AMF (bowling letters?) plus "I'M UP!," which is pretty clever, but that clue was an odd quotation + question mark format, and so I could process it until I had "I'M -P" (69D: "No cause for alarm!"?). I had "I'M OK" at first, and that would've been a fine answer for a non-question-marked version of this clue. But the "?" means some kind of wordplay is afoot, so rather than being an expression that means roughly the same thing as "No cause for alarm!" you get a phrase that means "I do not need an alarm to wake me up because I am already up." Of course, if you are indeed up, why would you say this, and to whom? Not clear. I might say it to myself as I turn off the alarm setting on my phone so as not to wake up my wife, I guess. Anyway, contrived, but clever. As for ARMLET ... how does that not mean "tiny arm?" (124A: Article of jewelry worn around the biceps). AMF stands for "American, Motherf*****!" It's what patriotic bowlers say whenever anyone asks them their nationality. Or, more prosaically, it stands (or stood, originally) for American Machine and Foundry.

Bullets:

• 95A: Like a wrung-out mop (DAMPISH) — I'm dubious about this word. If I asked you for the quality of a wrung-out mop, I think it's safe to say you'd say "damp" well before you'd venture DAMPISH. 
• 83D: Alice of TV's "Queen of the South" (BRAGA) — never heard of either one (the actress or the show). I thought the show was Ava DuVernay's show, but I remembered (just now) that that show was called Queen Sugar. The only BRAGA I know is Sônia BRAGA ... who, it turns out, is Alice BRAGA's aunt.
• 13D: Nickname for Britain's King Edward VII (BERTIE) — which one was he? EII's dad? Oof, no. It goes Victoria, Edward VII, George V, Edward VIII, George VI (are you kidding me!? Pick one!) and finally Elizabeth II. Well, not finally. We're on to Charles III now. The first two Charleses, hoo boy, those guys I know. Not sure why you'd name your son after them (the first of whom was beheaded), but that's none of my business. As for BERTIE, there's BERTIE Wooster, of course, but for me, a kid who came of age during peak Yacht Rock, this is the only BERTIE for me:

• 26D: Creature with a signature whistle it can use to identify itself (DOLPHIN) — Me: "why would a DOLPHIN need to identify itself? Does it know itself?" Existential DOLPHIN questions. Eventually I realized that the clue meant "identify itself to other dolphins" (at least I assume).
• 59D: Something well-taken? (WATER) — pretty good "?" clue. You take WATER from a well, so ... can't argue with that!
• 60D: Chartreuse or brandy, e.g. (DIGESTIF) — love it. Any cocktail-related terms, I'm gonna  love, the more specific the better (you see words like GIN a lot, but DIGESTIF? Rarely! In fact, before today, never! We use Chartreuse and brandy (incl. Cognac) in many of the cocktails we drink. One of my favorite drinks, the Diamondback, contains both (1.5 oz rye, .75 oz yellow Chartreuse, .75 oz Calvados (apple brandy)). Cheers.

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Big name in Greek yogurt / WED 8-14-24 / Texting format, in brief / One making a bed, perhaps / Leakes of reality TV / Beatles hit written by a teenage Paul McCartney / Insistently unhip

Constructor: Samuel A. Donaldson

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: "YOUR ROOTS ARE SHOWING" (48A: With 56-Across, hairstylist's observation (that also applies to 17-, 25- and 34-Across?)) — numbers are replaced with their (square) roots in three answers:

Theme answers:

• CLOUD THREE (from "cloud nine") (17A: Seventh heaven)
• SWEET FOUR (from "Sweet Sixteen") (25A: March Madness round)
• "WHEN I'M EIGHT" (from "When I'm Sixty-Four") (34A: Beatles hit written by a teenage Paul McCartney)

Word of the Day: Tegan and Sara (12D: Tegan and Sara, e.g. = POP DUO) —

Tegan and Sara (/ˈtiːɡən, ˈsɛərə/) is a Canadian indie pop duo formed in 1998 in Calgary, Alberta. The band is led by identical twin sisters, Tegan Rain Quin and Sara Keirsten Quin(born September 19, 1980). Both musicians are songwriters and multi-instrumentalists.

The duo has released ten studio albums and earned a Grammy nomination in 2012 for their video album Get Along. Their most recent album, Crybaby, was released on October 21, 2022. Their memoir, High School, was released on September 24, 2019, and in the fall of 2022, the TV series based on the memoir was released on Amazon Freevee.

• • •

[My CSA]

Do hairstylists really say this to their clients? Seems blunt. Maybe too blunt. "YOUR ROOTS ARE SHOWING" sounds like something you'd say to someone you're trying to casually insult (for being old, or phony, or not keeping up appearances), a phrase possibly followed by "dearie" or preceded by "honey." But then it could just be a benign observation from your hairstylist. I don't know. I don't have hair, and I never colored it when I did have it, so this is slightly foreign territory to me, but I'm familiar with the concept of roots showing, and I like what this puzzle has done with the idea. The basic idea of the theme becomes evident right away, or early anyway. I got CLOUD, and then NINE wouldn't fit in the five remaining spaces, so I had to work crosses to see what sort of NINE substitute was supposed to go there. Had a little trouble getting into that THREE—first two short crosses I tried to work were misfires (GAGS and HAH instead of SETS and HEH) (5D: Comedians' collections + 6D: "Good one")—but after some hacking, the THREE showed up and, yeah, THREE is the square "root" of NINE, as you probably know. Once the square root idea was clear, the other two themers weren't hard at all, but they were kinda fun to discover. The only question was "why are we doing this?" (i.e. "what is the revealer payoff going to be?"), and it only took a few letters in the first part of the revealer for the whole thing to become clear. That's a lot of real estate to give over to a revealer when you've only got three actual theme answers (no examples of the theme at all below the grid equator!), but when your revealer's fresh and sassy, maybe it deserves to take over half the grid. And if that revealer was too easy to get, well, it's Wednesday, not Thursday, so no one's really asking for excessive difficulty here. For me, the cuteness levels were sufficient, none of themers were duds—I'm happy.

The fill was more hit/miss. Those banks of 6s and 7s in the corners are a showcase for some more-interesting-than-usual fill (I'm particularly fond of the GETWET TAILPIPE MATINEE SNAGGED grouping in the SE), but there's a bit of clanking in the short stuff. I will never not find SPOOR unappealing as a word, and in the plural, moreso, especially if you cross it with ODO- (one of your less appealing prefixes ... and prefixes are rarely if ever appealing). I managed to remember OIKOS, and it's fine, I guess, but ODO OIKOS SPOORS just gives off a kind of ... ODOR (59A: Gym bag emanation). OIKOS ODOR ODO ODE HOER ... say that a few times, that'll wake you up. Or ERR EERIE EPEE ERAS, that's fun too. You can take back your SMS and your AMS and your ACTI, your DEE and your DEO, your SNO and SLO. It's all a bit LIMP. I love PHO but I'm not sure I love PHOS, which makes its NYTXW debut here as a soup plural—there are a few earlier (much earlier) appearances of PHOS in the puzzle, but those are all clued [Light: Pref.], except for that one time in 1988 when Maleska clued it as [Old cries of contempt], oof. Thank god *that* clue never reappeared. I would definitely have said "Pho!" to that. Possibly multiple times. So many "PHO!"S would I have uttered!

Notes:

• 21A: Texting format, in brief (SMS) — one of those abbrs. that I know but always slightly misremember. Is it RSS? MSS? HMS? LDS? ... SMH. 
• 35D: One making a bed (HOER) — ah, HOERs in beds, that doesn't sound weird or double entendre-y at all! Did you know that HOER is, in fact, Dutch (and Afrikaans) for "whore"? True story.
• 39A: Major league? (ARMY) — I got this easily enough, but it took me a while to fully understand it. My mind just processed "Major league" as just a large group (a metaphorical ARMY) of something. Only later did I realize, "oh, 'Major' is a rank ... in the ARMY ... so the ARMY is the 'league' that the Major ... plays in?" Something like that. 
• 47A: Composer ___ Carlo Menotti (GIAN) — I'm used to thinking of "Giancarlo" as one name (to the extent that I think about the name at all, which, admittedly, is only when I happen to be thinking about Giancarlo Esposito). Menotti composed the opera "AMAHL and the Night Visitors," which I have never seen and only know about because of crosswords. Definitely keep an eye out for AMAHL if you've not seen him before (70 NYTXW appearances, 33 in the Modern Era). The opera made its debut on NBC in 1951 ("the first opera specifically composed for television in the United States") and first appeared in the NYTXW in 1953. Let it not be said that Margaret Farrar* was averse to pop culture! A two-year turnaround time, that's not bad. 

• 53A: Wilbur, to Fern, in "Charlotte's Web" (PET PIG) — had that first "P" and wrote in PIGLET. Because Wilbur is a PIGLET. Very unfortunate misstep.
• 22D: Insistently unhip (STODGY) — I prefer to think of myself as "delightfully old-fashioned," but if you must namecall... I mainly hear this word now in baking contexts, specifically in the voice of Paul Hollywood or Mary Berry:

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

*Margaret Farrar was the first editor of the NYTXW

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Dating axiom / THU 2-8-24 / Title role for Tom Hanks in 2022 / Dog on a cat? / Colorful Coke brand / Austin Powers catchphrase / Jazz great Shaw / Food items originally called Froffles / Uncle Sam's land, informally

Constructor: Samuel A. Donaldson

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (more Easy ... but the grid is oversized again today, and the theme is slightly tricky to figure out) (5:25)

THEME: OPPOSITES ATTRACT (40A: Dating axiom ... or a hint to interpreting four pairs of answers in this puzzle) — sequential two-word phrases appearing in the same row have the order of their words reversed as the words that are opposites of one another (one in each answer) are pulled toward one another at the center of the grid; so, for instance, OVERPASS and GO UNDER become PASSOVER and UNDERGO because the opposites ("OVER," "UNDER") are "attracted" to one another:

Theme answers:

• PASSOVER / UNDERGO (18A: Highway crossing / 19A: Fail) ("overpass / go under")
• ORDER IN / OUTLAYS (24A: Sequentially arranged / 28A: Explains in detail) ("in order / lays out")
• HAND OFF / ON LEAVE (54A: Like an impromptu remark / 56A: Keep wearing) ("offhand / leave on")
• PAT DOWN / UPCHARGE (62A: Rehearsed to perfection / 66A: Excite, as a crowd) ("down pat / charge up")

Word of the Day: ARTIE Shaw (52A: Jazz great Shaw) —

Artie Shaw (born Arthur Jacob Arshawsky; May 23, 1910 – December 30, 2004) was an American clarinetist, composer, bandleader, actor and author of both fiction and non-fiction.

Widely regarded as "one of jazz's finest clarinetists", Shaw led one of the United States' most popular big bands in the late 1930s through the early 1940s. Though he had numerous hit records, he was perhaps best known for his 1938 recording of Cole Porter's "Begin the Beguine." Before the release of "Beguine," Shaw and his fledgling band had languished in relative obscurity for over two years and, after its release, he became a major pop artist within short order. The record eventually became one of the era's defining recordings. Musically restless, Shaw was also an early proponent of what became known much later as Third Stream music, which blended elements of classical and jazz forms and traditions. His music influenced other musicians, such as Monty Norman in England, whose "James Bond Theme" features a vamp possibly influenced by Shaw's 1938 recording of "Nightmare".

Shaw also recorded with small jazz groups drawn from within the ranks of the big bands he led. He served in the U.S. Navy from 1942 to 1944, during which time he led a morale-building band that toured the South Pacific. Following his discharge in 1944, he returned to lead a band through 1945. Following the breakup of that band, he began to focus on other interests and gradually withdrew from the world of being a professional musician and major celebrity, although he remained a force in popular music and jazz before retiring from music completely in 1954.

• • •

This is architecturally fascinating. To find answers that do this—where the "opposites" can pull toward one another and leave you with new phrases that aren't gibberish—and then to find ones that fit so neatly and symmetrically in the grid!? It's ... something. Something impressive. The solve itself was not what I'd call exciting—mostly easy, but with occasional answers that seemed at first merely wrong, and then merely reversed. I had no idea what OPPOSITES ATTRACT was getting at until after I was completely done. There was a long and winding road from my first encounter with a theme answer ("that is not what 'highway crossings' are called!") to my final, post-game "AHA!" (tremendous clue on that one, btw (2D: "Now I remember who sang 'Take On Me'!")). I didn't even understand that the theme answers would make sense if you reversed their words until I was well below the puzzle equator, at HANDOFF (54A: Like an impromptu remark). "Well, the answer's 'offhand,' but ... oh! ... OH!" I had left a couple squares blank in earlier themers. Figured 24A: Sequentially arranged had to be ORDERED but I had an answer that clearly ended in "N" so ???? And I'd initially had OUTLINE before giving way to the incomprehensible (as clued) OUTLAYS (28A: Explains in detail). But with the "offhand" / HANDOFF click, I could look up and fix or make sense of all the earlier themers. Still, what this flipping of terms had to do with opposites attracting, I had no idea, until the entire finished grid lay out before me and then the juxtaposition of the "opposite" terms leapt out at me. Ta da. 

[refusing to play the obvious Paula Abdul song here]

The rest of the puzzle, as I say, was just mysteriously, suspiciously easy. The kind of easy that makes you wonder what you're missing (for what I was missing, see that last paragraph I just wrote). Still, the fill was more than just filler. Those banks of 7s and 8s in the corners are actually pretty solid, especially considering they had to be built *around* the theme material (unlike similar corners in themeless puzzles, where you can do whatever you want). Themers are fixed, and they can be tough to build around. Certainly tough to build around cleanly. Nothing scintillating in those longer non-theme answers, but I like the clue on CAPTCHAS (1A: Reality checks?), and while I'm not an Austin Powers fan, I do like the sass of "OH, BEHAVE!" here today. ETHICAL, GHOSTLY, TWO-STEPS, LINEAGE ... yes, that longer stuff holds up. There was some iffi-/ickiness in the short stuff here and there, most notably WAL (oof, maybe the worst partial name there is) and REPART, what in the world? (53D: Split hairs again?). I get it, you are parting your hair ... for a second time ... but ... this needs its own word? It's like RESLEEP or RECLIMB or RECARVE or something. Comprehensible, but basically made-up. The middle of the grid gets a little shaky (SSE AMSO SMH), but that was probably among the toughest parts of the grid to work out, with so much thematic crowding in. I think the fill holds up well over all—particularly well, given the thematic density. Often with gimmick puzzles, I feel like I merely *endure* the solve in order to get to some alleged "AHA!" that hardly seems worth it. Today, the "AHA!" felt genuine, and hard earned, and the solve itself was at least as pleasant as your average NYT solve, maybe moreso. In short, I like it.

Some notes:

• 1A: Reality checks? (CAPTCHAS) — These are the internet bots that ask you to prove that you're not one of them (i.e. that you exist in "reality"). Type the character sequence that you see, click on the squares with bicycles in them, that sort of thing. 
• 47A: "Unbelievable!," in internet shorthand (SMH) — "shaking my head"; I don't think of this initialism as something warranting an exclamation point (!) in the clue! "Unbelievable!" is OMG. "Unbelievable..." is better for SMH, which denotes more low-key bafflement than astonishment.
• 30D: Where trailers wind up (LAST) — Yikes, what? Not even a "sometimes" or a "might"? You might trail (in a race) and then come from behind and win. Or you might trail the leader for the entire race but wind up coming in second (out of some larger number, i.e. not LAST). And not even a "?" on the clue? Bizarre. Both the hardest and the worst clue in the puzzle.
• 67D: Dog on a cat? (PAW) — "Dog" is slang for (usually a human) "foot." So [Dog on a dog?] would've worked too, but I guess this way is funnier? Opposites attract? 
• 69D: Economic fig. (GNP) — a grim kealoa* ... gotta leave the middle letter blank and wait for help from the cross, because GDP works just as well.
• 70D: End of days? (ESS) — Hey, look, another "letteral" clue (where you have to take the clue "literally" and the answer is a "letter"). We had one of these yesterday. I guess the universe does want me to make "letteral" happen. Fine. I give in, universe. (In case it wasn't clear, ESS is the last letter (i.e. the "End of") the word "days")

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

*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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Stubborn Seuss character, with "the" / WED 5-3-2023 / Language in which "Nebraska" means "flat river" / "100 Years ... 100 Movies" org.

Constructor: Samuel A. Donaldson

Relative difficulty: Hard!! 16:13

THEME: OOPS I DID IT AGAIN — Phrases that already contain the word "it" have the letters IT inserted a second time, to wacky effect

[Edit, 12:30pm: A commenter suggested I highlight the added letters, so I've done that now.]

Theme answers:

• WHO CAN IT BITE NOW-- Vicious pet handler's query?
• ITS A GOOD TITHING-- Observation when the collection plate is overflowing?
• I GUESS ITS FINITE-- "So much for my theory that the universe has no end"?

Word of the Day: ZAX (Stubborn Seuss character, with "the") —

A story from the book The Sneetches and Other Stories features The Zax from the Dr. Seuss book. They are stubborn and arguable and have messy hair and hairy bodies. They live in the Prairie of Prax. Varieties of Zax include a North-Going Zax and a South-Going-Zax. Due to their stubbornness, they refuse to go in any direction other than their assigned directions. If a south-going Zax encounters a north-going Zax, they cannot solve their issue and the world progresses without them as years pass by, such as a highway being built over them and a city nearby while still standing grumpily at each other.

• • •

Hey pals! Happy Malaika MWednesday to all those who celebrate. This evening I had Indian food and then saw the movie Polite Society with a friend on 34th St. Then we watched all the Knicks fans exit MSG as though it were the great wildebeest migration in the Serengeti. Anyway, puzzle time.

My thought when I started this puzzle was definitely blechhh.... I do not do well with pun themes, and I honestly only skimmed the clues of the long answers. Until!! I got to the revealer. Britney!! My girl!!!! I dropped in the entry with zero crosses, and also immediately changed my solving music (Prince + Rosie Gaines' version of Nothing Compares 2 U --> Britney's Toxic). What a reinvigorating entry. At the end of the day, this is still Add-Some-Letters Wackiness, but I loved the "reason" for it.

our queen

The non-theme stuff felt a little tricky or crunchy or tortured, whatever you want to call it. Lots of fill that made me wrinkle my nose, like KIR and SERA and SEZ and SECO and EFT and RIOJA and SSR and AFI. I filled those in with ease because I've seen them all before, but if you're a new solver, those are the types of entries that might make you think crosswords are only for people who are wine experts or herpetologists or whatever. (New solvers!! Please know that very few of us are wine experts!!!! We just look at the solution the first few times, and then memorize all those little words for future use.)

I was also aware of how many prepositional(?) phrases there were. (Is that what they're called?? Someone correct me.) Things like HOP IN / SEE TO / STIRS IN / IRON ON / IN TIME / GLOM ONTO. The phrasing of clues for those types of terms can feel sort of clunky, and they're tough to parse when you're new to Crossword Grammar.

Bullets:

• Is steak tartare topped with RAW EGG? I thought it was topped with raw egg yolk, which does feel decently different
• EUROZONE was a great entry
• As was ACID WASH!

xoxo Malaika

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Former name of a Kansas arena that commemorated a 1976 U.S. anniversary / SUN 2-12-23 / Triumphant shout at a crossword tournament / Beast with recurved horns / Locally focused lecture franchise / Civil rights icon Helen Burroughs / Shield of ancient Greece Var. / drag hockey maneuver / Restaurant competitor of Pinkberry and Sweet Frog / Hebrew version of the English pronoun "I"

Constructor: Christina Iverson and Samuel A. Donaldson

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (with added difficulty for me, who refused to solve the puzzle with correct formatting ... more below)

THEME: "Cheap Thrills" — theme answers are phrases meaning [Economizing], with each answer also represented elsewhere in the grid as a visual pun:

Theme answers:

• CUTTING CORNERS (24A: Economizing, as represented by the circled squares?) ("SAW" and "AXE" appear in circled squares in the "corners")
• PINCHING PENNIES (40A: Economizing, as represented twice in 12-Down)
• BICENTENNIAL CENTER (12D: Former name of a Kansas arena that commemorated a 1976 U.S. anniversary) (two "CENT"s are "pinched" (into single squares) inside of this answer)
• STRETCHING A BUCK (94A: Economizing, as represented in 58-Down?)
• SSIINNGGLLEE (58D: Not in a relationship) (a "single" (dollar bill, or "buck") is "stretched" such that it takes up two squares instead of one)
• MAKING ENDS MEET (four words meaning "(rear) end" "meet" at the center of the grid: INCAN, ASSET, BUTTE and ALBUM)

Word of the Day: NANNIE Helen Burroughs (97D: Civil right icon ___ Helen Burroughs) —

Nannie Helen Burroughs (May 2, 1879 – May 20, 1961) was a black educator, orator, religious leader, civil rights activist, feminist, and businesswoman in the United States. Her speech "How the Sisters Are Hindered from Helping," at the 1900 National Baptist Convention in Virginia, instantly won her fame and recognition. In 1909, she founded the National Training School for Women and Girls in Washington, DC. Burroughs' objective was at the point of intersection between race and gender.

She fought both for equal rights in races as well as furthered opportunities for women beyond the simple duties of domestic housework. She continued to work there until her death in 1961. In 1964, it was renamed the Nannie Helen Burroughs School in her honor and began operating as a co-ed elementary school. Constructed in 1927–1928, its Trades Hall has a National Historic Landmark designation. (wikipedia)

• • •

OK so I download the puzzle every day in what's known as the .puz format and then I solve it using software called Black Ink (the better-known software for solving .puz files is AcrossLite, but I like Black Ink better). This the software I have always used, ever since I started solving puzzles again after a hiatus that ran roughly from the late '90s (when I had a dead-tree subscription to the NYT) to the early '00s, when I realized "oh, wow, you can just solve these digitally now, cool." The NYT stopped officially offering puzzles in the .puz format a few years ago, but you can still get them using this special Chrome browser extension called "Crossword Scraper" (a godsend ... I almost don't want to mention it for fear that I'll jinx the whole magic set-up and .puz files will be well and truly discontinued). I am set in my ways, I am stubborn, and I resent the NYT making me solve in its app so that it can have all my data etc. Just let me have my puzzle and leave me alone. No stats, no streaks, no nothing. Just solving. Anyway, the point is that today I saw that there were "Puzzle Notes" accompanying my .puz file, and so I read them, and they told me that the software couldn't handle some of the formatting and that I should probably solve the puzzle at the source (i.e. the puzzle website or the app). To which I silently replied "**** that!" and just plowed straight into the puzzle. I'll read the little "Puzzle Notes," grudgingly, but if I'm told to change formats, my reaction is defiance. I happily accept whatever added difficulty is coming my way. I figure, I've solved a jillion puzzles, I can make the damn thing work without the fancy formatting. Weirdly, this all ended up in a Best Case Scenario today, as I was able to solve the entire puzzle, but one of the four "Economizing" visual gags was just ... invisible. You can see, in the finished grid (above) that SAW and AXE are in circled squares (for CUTTING CORNERS) and "SINGLE" (a "buck") is *stretched* out (each letter in the word repeated), and you can see the two rebus squares where "CENT" (a "penny") has been "pinched" (twice). But that left one themer unaccounted for: where, oh where, were the alleged "shaded squares" that would make sense of MAKING ENDS MEET!?!?! That was the question. And figuring out the answer to that question, dear readers, was the greatest damn experience of the whole solve. Where do "ENDS MEET" in this grid? What are "ends"? A letter string ("END" meeting "END")? Maybe it's words *meaning* end ... but where to look? Well, the other themers have their visual puns in symmetrical places, so ... where would the theme stuff be if symmetry were to be (roughly) maintained? How about the mid- ... oh my god!

My "ends" hunt was actually a butt-hunt! Four butts! Meeting! Butt congress! Well that ... that was unexpected. One hell of an exclamation point, one bright red cherry on top of an already pretty good puzzle. Discovering the butts, rather than having them, uh, shoved in my face—that was delightful. This should've been a meta puzzle where readers had to *find* the damned "shaded squares," because I'm telling you ... I really feel like I earned those asses. 

I like this theme quite a bit, in that it's got a very tight core concept—every phrase can be defined by [Economizing], and the theme phrases are all perfectly symmetrically arranged, and the visual puns are *also* symmetrically arranged. It's elegant and layered and nice. My way of solving also gave me another unintended layer—the butt layer. I haven't been this happy after finishing a Sunday puzzle in ... well, a long time.

I don't believe MINIPIGs are real and you can't convince me otherwise, what an absurd idea (79A: Little squealer). Don't like NON GRATA on its own, just sitting there, wondering where PERSONA went (99A: Unwelcome, so to speak). And YOGISM ... come on (11D: Tranquil discipline). Seriously, come on. You mean YOGA. That is one painful -ISMing. I love "DEMON RUM" as a colloquial expression, but then I read a lot of pulp fiction from the '20s. Seems like the clue could've indicated "colloquialism" a little more clearly, or at all (36A: Prohibition target). That's pretty much all the MOANing I have to do about this puzzle. It was pretty easy overall. Didn't know NANNIE, but she only slowed me down a little. Had RANK before RUNG (22A: Hierarchy level), but I think that's the only time I made an initial error. Oh, no, one other: I thought [Parts of a gig] were LEGS. I was thinking musical gigs (actually, musical tours), not gigabytes (MEGS). Oh, and I had no idea about ANI (86A: Hebrew version of the English pronoun "I"), so that was tough, but again, the crosses were all fair and came pretty readily. The thematic concept is strong, the execution is solid, and the Unintentional Ass Hunt at the end, [chef's kiss]! Cheap thrills, indeed.

That's all for today's puzzle. Just a note now to say that all thank-you postcards have now gone out to people who made financial contributions to the blog in January. We'll be completely up-to-date on the correspondence by tomorrow. A few recent (February) contributors have worried about being "too late" to get the special cat / crossword thank-you card. To be clear, there's no such thing as "too late." All year long, any snail-mail contributions get this year's custom postcard as a reply. We made sure to order plenty. I have received so many lovely letters this past month, and so many shared stories of pet love and pet loss. And pictures! Pictures of kitties and puppers!

And drawings! Commemorating the writers' deceased pets...

... or my own ...

And then there's this card, featuring drawings of my new cat IDA and her progress from Day 1 (bloodied, emaciated) to now (healed, somewhat fatter), which is really, really special (it's currently on our fireplace mantle, probably forever):

I'm very lucky to have such thoughtful (and creative) readers. Thank you all. And in case you're wondering how IDA is settling in to her new home, here's a picture from earlier today—the big tabby is her older "brother" ALFIE (whom, you may remember, we found in the bushes outside our house, almost three years ago, near the beginning of COVID Times, in a rainstorm, at four weeks old). ALFIE is a beautiful boy, but not ... always easy to get close to, so this ... this is something else, esp. considering they've only known each other three weeks :)

That's all. Enjoy your Sunday.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. PSA = Public Service Announcement, and the "Smokey" in the clue is Smokey the Bear (127A: Smokey spot, for short)

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Lab-engineered fare, facetiously / SUN 11-13-22 / 1993 R&B hit with the lyric "Keep playin' that song all night" / Mesopotamian metropolis / Tree of the custard apple family / Brand name-checked in Paul Simon's "Kodachrome"

Constructor: Samuel A. Donaldson

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: FRANKENFOOD (62A: Lab-engineered fare, facetiously ... or a hint to the six crossings of shaded squares) / BUMPER CROPS (73A: Bountiful harvests for farmers ... or another hint to the crossings of shaded squares) — there are six different "crop" collisions, or "crossings" in the grid; the crops appear as letter strings inside circled squares inside ordinary puzzle answers.

The FRANKENFOOD / BUMPERCROPS:

• OLIVE / RICE
• SQUASH / OAT
• MANGO / BANANA
• TOMATO / CORN 
• LIME / CHIVE
• BEET / MELON

Word of the Day: "HEY, MR. DJ!" (49D: 1993 R&B hit with the lyric "Keep playin' that song all night") —

"Hey Mr. D.J." is a song by American R&B group Zhané, recorded for their debut album, Pronounced Jah-Nay (1994). It was released as the group's debut single in August 1993 and also features a rap from Rottin Razkals member Fam. The song samples "Looking Up to You" by singer Michael Wycoff. The single peaked at number six on the Billboard Hot 100 and was certified gold by the RIAA for selling 500,000 copies domestically. In Australia, it peaked at number nine, while reaching number 20 in New Zealand. Originally, the song was recorded and released on the 1993 compilation album Roll Wit tha Flava. // Zhané (/ʒɑːˈneɪ/ zhah-NAY) was an American R&B duo, best known for their 1993 hit "Hey Mr. D.J.", which reached No. 6 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100. Other popular hits include "Groove Thang" (U.S. No. 17) and minor hit "Sending My Love", both released in 1994. The group was part of Queen LATIFAH's Flavor Unit collective [!!?]. (emph. mine) (wikipedia)

• • •

Never good to finish the puzzle with "holy s***, that is Awful!" but that is exactly how this one concluded. That SW corner is ... I dunno. ACTIVES???? Is that short for ... "active ingredients"???? I was wholly willing to believe that [Some skin care ingredients, informally] were ACTIVOS, as I had regular crosswordese ODESSA at 120A: Mesopotamian metropolis instead of godawful crosswordese EDESSA. Throw in the never-seen-it-in-the-singular VAGARY, and you have one untasty soup down there. Makes TOMATO/CORN sound downright tasty. Which brings me to one of my main problems with this theme: FRANKENFOOD suggests something, well, horrifying, or at least unappetizing, and, well, MANGO and BANANA go great together, actually, as do OLIVE and RICE and TOMATO and CORN. And FRANKENFOOD is, as the clue says, "lab-engineered"... which has nothing to do with crossing two pre-existing foods. BUMPER CROPS makes *much* more sense as the revealer here, since, in every theme answer instance, two "crops" sort of "bump" into each other and ricochet off at a ninety-degree angle. The FRANKENFOOD thing probably seemed like a cool idea, and certainly gives the puzzle a highly unusual double central reveal, but it doesn't really make sense. It's decorative, and so inapt that it's a distraction. Basically, this is an OK theme if you ditch FRANKENFOOD—it's a cool answer, sure, but it's just not an accurate reflection of what's going on in the theme. I actually couldn't even see the theme until I got BUMPER CROPS. That is, despite having three of the six "crossings" in place, FRANKENFOOD didn't help me see the "foods" that were involved at all. But BUMPER CROPS. Mwah. There it is. The only true revealer.

The fill on this one seemed fine. Except for that egregious SW corner, I don't really have any complaints. And it wasn't a breeze, either. Not hard, but I definitely had to work in places (unlike yesterday's Tuesday-posing-as-Saturday). I had PECAN before PAPAW (1D: Tree of the custard apple family). I needed a bunch of crosses to get LASER TAG (33A: Game typically played in the dark). I have never, ever heard of AERObiology (and don't understand calling attention to your crosswordese by turning it into something semi-obscure like this, but whatever) (69A: Prefix with biology). Again, it seems like the editor was inexplicably smitten with the idea of duplicate cluing (see 81A: Prefix with biology = ASTRO). Almost always makes one of the clues feel really clunky ... and yet he persists with this conceit that most people don't notice and no one really enjoys. The whole eastern section was by far the hardest part for me. AXE HEAD??? (48A: It might be stuck on the chopping block). I had HEAD but zero idea what could come before it. I only ever think of the "chopping block" as something metaphorical. Also, ITTY!?!? Ugh. I had EENY (ugh) and ITSY (also ugh). Just an awful little (!) "word" to get held up on. Was unsure of both TONES and FILM, and LATIFAH was reasonably well hidden, and HARD G was doing what it always does (ugh) (78A: What gorillas have that giraffes lack?), so yeah, that whole section was a wrestling match, and not a terribly fun one. Everything else felt pretty normal, difficulty-wise. 

This puzzle had one great answer, and here it is:

I got JIF and thought "... terminal 'J'!?!!? Seven letters ending in 'J'!? What the hell can that possibly be!?" And then I took one look at the clue and thought "Oh, wow, yes, Yes. Now we're talking!" A great answer that I came at from just the right angle. The rest of the grid is solid enough, but nothing comes near the dizzying high of "HEY, MR. DJ!"

Had TORRENT before TORNADO (89D: Relative of a waterspout). Hilariously, wrote in LON before LIZ (52A: Politico Cheney). That NFL TEAM clue is really not good, considering only one person on the "TEAM" actually does any "hiking" (86A: Hiking group?). In case you were worried that there was some progressive politician you'd never heard of called FLO, don't worry (83D: Longtime Progressive spokeswoman). It's capital-P Progressive, and she's just the longtime spokesperson for that particular insurance agency. Binghamton grad! We're very proud. Have a nice day. And happy birthday to my mother, without whom I would literally physically actually be nothing. See you in a week, mom!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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