Measure of rank in Maori culture, informally / SAT 10-18-25 / Panhellenic games venue / East African honorific / Something pulled in many car chase scenes, for short / Energy device that reflects sunlight / Colorful swimmers in the Amazon / Sweet doings at a county fair / Bread purchase in the U.K. / Fangorn resident / Attire for many a flamenco dancer / Culinary concurrence

Constructor: Samuel Smalley

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: HELIOSTAT (30D: Energy device that reflects sunlight) —

A heliostat (from Ancient Greek ἥλιος (hḗlĭos) 'sun' and στατός (stătós) 'standing') is a device that reflects sunlight toward a target, turning to compensate for the Sun's apparent motion. The reflector is usually a plane mirror. // The target may be a physical object, distant from the heliostat, or a direction in space. To do this, the reflective surface of the mirror is kept perpendicular to the bisector of the angle between the directions of the Sun and the target as seen from the mirror. In almost every case, the target is stationary relative to the heliostat, so the light is reflected in a fixed direction. [...] Currently, most heliostats are used for daylighting or for the production of concentrated solar power, usually to generate electricity. They are also sometimes used in solar cooking. A few are used experimentally to reflect motionless beams of sunlight into solar telescopes. Before the availability of lasers and other electric lights, heliostats were widely used to produce intense, stationary beams of light for scientific and other purposes. (wikipedia)

• • •

Undercluing made this one pretty tough at times. Presumably FIRE BOATS would respond specifically to a fire on a cruise ship, not just "emergencies," so I had the BOATS but no hope for FIRE (8D: Responders to cruise ship emergencies). [Crunchy snacks] could have been approximately one jillion things (lots of OAT BARS aren't particularly crunchy, anyways). And as for "WELL, SORTA," I do not see where anything like "SORTA" is indicated in the clue (31A: "Uh ... I guess"). "Sure," "why not?," "OK" all seem like apt substitutes for "I guess." SORTA sorta sucks. Cluing aside, that's a fairly weak standalone phrase. I feel like you are more apt to shorten "sort of" to SORTA when it directly precedes another word, like an adjective or verb ("SORTA sorta sucks"). If you say "SORTA" as a standalone phrase, you're likely to be saying the "OF" at least lightly, mildly. Anyway, I had "WELL-?????" and later "WELL, -ORT-" and still wasn't entirely sure. This is partly because both ELLIE and ELSIE "sound like two letters of the alphabet" (27D: Woman's name that sounds like two letters of the alphabet). As you can probably tell from the answers I've homed in on here at the beginning, the biggest struggle for me today was everything from the dead center to the NE. 8A: Bubbles looks like it should end in "S"—it doesn't (FROTH). 14A: Knocked out looks like it should end in "ED"—it doesn't (IN AWE). Instead of RNA, I had the NSA doing my "translation" up there (9D: It works in translation). Worst of all (maybe), I've never heard the term "EBRAKE" in my life. If there's an "E" prefix, I assume it's "electronic" (as it always is in modern coinages). When I looked it up after I was finished, I was expecting to find some type of "brake" I'd never heard of. But no. The "E" just stands for "Emergency." Silly, inefficient me, I've been calling it "the emergency brake" my whole life, like some kind of chump. Think of all the microseconds I could've been saving (although I probably would've lost much more time answering the follow-up question, "the what now?"). 

Was the experience worth the struggle? In other parts of the grid, yes, mostly. There's no one answer I'm particularly enamored with in the middle, but I think that ("WELL SORTA" aside) it's a solid stack, and HAULED ASS is kind of fun. FACE TAT is a fantastic opener (1A: Measure of rank in Maori culture, informally), and that whole NW corner is really varied and crunchy (I have to thank LAURA Bush, who was the only reason I was able to get started with this puzzle). AD HOC to LAURA Bush. I was flailing around a bit before that. I would've thought that the [Crank cases?] were the UFOLOGists, not the field of UFOLOGY. Again, this feels underclued. Not seeing anything particularly UFO-ish about the clue. "Cranks" can be "overly enthusiastic" and "annoyingly eccentric" (merriam webster dot com) about many things. UFOs are one of them, but ??? Loved seeing UFOLOGY, but not sure about that clue. When I came out of that NW corner, I was dead stuck. 

I had some ideas for what might follow TAFFY, but my first idea was STORE, which sounded weak / strange, so I left it (5D: Sweet doings at a county fair). Then, a weird breakthrough. I threw down ELLIE for the "sounds like two letters" name, and with that initial "E," could see that 26A: Present a chance to get ahead was probably OPEN ... something. That "P" confirmed the other post-TAFFY word I had thought of (PULLS), and then the "N" from OPEN really launched me, as somehow NEON TETRAS ended up being correct! (28D: Colorful swimmers in the Amazon). So I went from pretty stuck to whoosh, all the way down and into the SE before I knew it. That section ended up being the easiest for me by far.

The SE presented no problems except for PANLOAF (I make all my bread purchases in the U.S., not the U.K.) (33D: Bread purchase in the U.K.), and the fat center of the puzzle also proved pretty tractable after the NEONTETRAS breakthrough. That just left the SW and NE. Having the front ends of Dows made the SW pretty easy, although I can't say I really knew what a HELIOSTAT was (I threw the STAT on the end because ... it just seemed like a thing?). I had no idea NEMEA was the site of anything but a lion for Hercules to fight, so I needed crosses there (50A: Panhellenic games venue). My favorite thing about the SW was my own mistake—I misread 32D: Can hold one's own, in modern lingo (HAS GAME), as "Can't hold one's own," so I wanted HAS NO ... something. The phrase that came to mind was "HAS NO JUICE," which wouldn't fit, but for a hilarious second or two I thought "OMG has someone somewhere shortened "HAS NO JUICE" to "HAS NO OJ"!?!?). Look, I'm willing to believe virtually anything about "modern slang" at this point. Once I finally read the clue correctly, HAS GAME was pretty easy, and all that was left after that was the NE ... and we've been over that.

Bullets:

• 18A: Light that goes up when things are going down? (FLARE) — I had ALARM at one point. My "things" that were "going down" was a burglary, I guess. Of course an ALARM is not a "light," but lights might be part of one, so I just went for it. I blame the perfectly placed "LA" for making me misguess.
• 29A: Spaniards roll them (ARS) — wanted the Spanish word for "R"s here. What is that? ERS? No, ERRES, it looks like. ARS is the (dumb) way you spell the plural of "R" in America.
• 39A: Monthly magazine that sponsors a large annual music festival in New Orleans (ESSENCE) — this answer basically filled itself in easily from crosses, which is good, as nothing about that clue was going to get me to ESSENCE any time quick.
• 45A: Smallest member of the eurozone (122 square miles) (MALTA) — in five letters, there aren't that many options. Small five-letter places in Europe. I got it off the "M," but I think I would've got it with no help at all. Coincidentally, my Crime Fiction course starts reading The Maltese Falcon next week.

• 3D: "There's never been a better time" tech sloganeer (CISCO) — it would be so lovely if the puzzle would spare me tech sloganeering. The world is dystopian enough, I don't need tech overlord slogans foisted on me this early in the morning. Entirely unwelcome.
• 6D: ___ Sea, locale of a 20th-century environmental disaster (ARAL) — it's been shrinking for as long as I've been solving crosswords. Is it actually gone now? Yes, it had "largely dried up into desert by the 2010s" (wikipedia).
• 24D: Bonheur who painted "Ploughing in the Nivernais" (ROSA) — I'm sure I knew her name at one point, but sure blanked on it today.

[Ploughing in the Nivernais, 1849]

• 7D: Cry that might be made with a bow ("TADA!") — don't you bow later, after the "TADA!"? "TADA" feels like a flourish you'd say standing proudly upright. But I'm both not a magician and have no interest in magic, so maybe there are "TADA" bowers out there, what do I know?
• 22D: Upright bar (GOALPOST) — took me longer than it should've. I'm used to the GOALPOSTs coming in pairs. The term "uprights" would've made sense to me as (football) GOALPOSTs. But here "upright" just looked like an ordinary non-sports-related adjective; once again, the clue denies you context as a way of making things harder.

I was supposed to go up and make an appearance at today's Finger Lakes Crossword Competition in Ithaca, but after my first very busy week at school (two new mini courses starting right in the middle of my ongoing semester), my body has decided to be sick now. Boo to cold or flu or COVID or rickets or whatever it is I have. It's a cold, I'm pretty sure, but I'm not going to go hang out in an enclosed space with a lot of people (many of them older people) while I'm sick, so pffffffffft. I'm sad. I like watching people solve crosswords in a middle school cafeteria. Instead I'm just gonna be on my couch with tea. Hope your day is better. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Diner owner in Garfield / SAT 5-27-23 / Squee-inducing / Sarcastic response to a first-world-problem complaint / Approval often uttered impatiently / Very clear say colloquially / California-based soft drink company

Constructor: Samuel Smalley

Relative difficulty: Medium (though I made it much harder than it should've been...)

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: SONJA Sohn (4D: "The Wire" actress Sohn) —

Sonja Denise Plack (née Williams; born May 9, 1964), known professionally as Sonja Sohn, is an American actress, activist and filmmaker, best known for portraying Baltimore detective Kima Greggs in the HBO drama The Wire (2002–2008). She is also known for having starred in the independent film Slam, which she co-wrote, and appearing as Samantha Baker in the ABC series Body of Proof. Her role in  The Wire led to her work as the leader of a Baltimore community initiative called ReWired for Change. (wikipedia)

• • •

My entire experience with this puzzle can be summed up in three words: PEAK HOURS BEANSTALK. As in, "Jack preferred to climb the BEANSTALK early in the morning, rather than during PEAK HOURS, so that he could avoid traffic and fees (to say nothing of fies, foes, and fums)." I think you've got a just-fine, ordinarily difficult Saturday puzzle here, but when you drop PEAK HOURS and BEANSTALK, bam bam, and then *cross* them with HAIRY (23A: Like a lion), well, the puzzle becomes virtually impenetrable. TAMPER PROOF, even. I had inklings early on that something was amiss. For instance, I really hated HAIRY as an answer for [Like a lion]. "Lots of animals are HAIRY!" I internally jeered. But then eventually I confirmed ("confirmed") the "Y" with ALLEY, and so HAIRY really really didn't wanna budge. But down below, I couldn't make the short stuff work. No way to see NEWT or STAGY, for instance, and those short answers are the things I rely on for traction in a wide-open puzzle like this, as well as for access to the corners. And yet—with the (wrong) "K" in place from BEANSTALK, I figured the letter in front of it had to be an "S" ... and it was! SALUT! (40D: French toast). So now the two very long, very wrong answers had literally carried me across the grid and into the SW corner, where I started having success, so ... anyway, PEAK HOURS and BEANSTALK stayed in place a long, long time. I had much of the SW done and *all* of the NE done before I started to put enough of a squeeze on the center that those wrong answers finally popped out of place. 

But even getting TOTES ADORBS (my first long Across) (33A: Squee-inducing) didn't dislodge PEAK HOURS or BEANSTALK: wrong answers, yes, but they had the right letters for the TOTES ADORBS cross. And yet ... as is fitting and possibly even TOTES ADORBS, a dog came to my rescue: TOTO! TOTES to TOTO! I had the back ends of the other long Acrosses  (PROOF, TRAINS) pretty well sorted, and so when T-US-- PROOF just looked like total garbage, I boldly pulled both HOURS and STALK and bam, in went TAMPER PROOF, and then in went MODEL TRAINS (32A: Bad things to lose track of?). Felt great to finally get the breakthrough I needed. What felt less great was having the replacements of PEAK HOURS and BEANSTALK be significantly duller answers. PEAK TIMES is somehow much less vivid, and BEAN ... PLANT? Woof. As Jack might've said before descending the BEANSTALK, that's a long way down. Ah well, at least TAWNY was (infinitely) better than HAIRY. That's something.

The fat middle of this puzzle is fine, but I actually think the corners are the most entertaining part, which is saying something, as usually in a puzzle like this, the middle has all the marquee stuff and the corners tend to be kind of perfunctory. But today they're fizzing with energy: GINS UP GOODIE "NEED ME?" OPEN TAB DADJOKES had me in a good mood right from the start (to be clear, dad jokes never put me in a good mood, but as an answer, DAD JOKES was pleasing, and the clue really worked well (19A: Pop corn?) (as in "corny jokes your pop might make")). MOB FRONT "TO RECAP..." HERNIA  ... RACE BIB "ALL MINE!" BIG NO-NOS ... LAB WASTE "POOR YOU..." "SAVE US!" ... the corners are really working hard to ensure you're having a good time. I appreciate it. I even liked seeing WOAH, a lamentably tenacious bit of nonsense, because the clue was perfect—the clue *knows* the spelling is garbage (however popular) and it tells you so, with its addition of a disdainfully eye-rolling "in one spelling." This puzzle has me liking DAD JOKES and WOAH—a truly huge accomplishment. 

More stuff:

• 1A: Creates by artificial means (GINS UP) — really wanted CLONES.
• 14A: New Year's Day, informally (ONE ONE) — really wanted DAY ONE, really having trouble imagining someone saying "ONE ONE" and my understanding them, especially on New Year's Day, when it's at least possible I'll be nursing a hangover.
• 18A: Some toy carriers (SLEIGHS) — ??? How many Santas are there?
• 34A: Traveling sorts (HOBOS) — I feel like this is far too vague a clue for HOBOS. Without trains or bindles or secret code or unshaven faces, I'm at a loss. 
• 9D: Actress DuVall of "21 Grams" (CLEA) — I know her from "Veep." She was the first answer I put into the NE, and absolutely crucial to getting traction up there.
• 30D: Role played by a dog with a bigger salary than some human actors in the same film (TOTO) — Doesn't this describe most major dog roles? Surely ASTA and CUJO made more money than "some (!?!?!) human actors" in those films.
• 43D: Going without, in a way (NUDE) — that's not an expression for NUDE. There are lots of slangy expressions for NUDE, and "Going without" is not one of them. You just omitted a word from the clue ("clothes"). YES, YES, I get that you wanted to do a misdirect, and have people think "Going without" meant "being deprived" in some way, but you can't just make stuff up, unless you wanna bring in the "?" to help you out. [Going without?]. I might accept that.

Hope you found things to like. See you tomorrow, or whenever.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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