Followers of an "enduring" philosophy/ MON 12-4-23 / Radio band for news and talk formats / Palindromic boy / Mineral also known as the "imperial gem" / Loose-leaf alternatives / Bygone, in Chaucer's tales / Totally reverse one's losing position

Constructor: Sean Ziebarth

Relative difficulty: Medium (solving Downs-only)

THEME: DJS (54D: Workers at dance clubs who 20-, 25-, 43- and 48-Across) — familiar phrases reimagined as things DJS do:

Theme answers:

• SET A NEW RECORD (20A: Make history at the Olympics, say)
• TURN THE TABLES (25A: Totally reverse one's losing position)
• MOVE THE NEEDLE (43A: Have an impact that can be gauged)
• DON'T MISS A BEAT (48A: Keep going without faltering one bit)

Word of the Day: AM STEREO (4D: Radio band for news and talk formats) —

AM stereo is a term given to a series of mutually incompatible techniques for radio broadcasting stereo audio in the AM band in a manner that is compatible with standard AM receivers. There are two main classes of systems: independent sideband (ISB) systems, promoted principally by American broadcast engineer Leonard R. Kahn; and quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) multiplexing systems (conceptually closer to FM stereo).

Initially adopted by many commercial AM broadcasters in the mid to late 1980s, AM stereo broadcasting soon began to decline due to a lack of receivers (most "AM/FM stereo" radios only receive in stereo on FM), a growing exodus of music broadcasters to FM, concentration of ownership of the few remaining stations in the hands of large corporations and the removal of music from AM stations in favor of news/talk or sports broadcasting. By 2001, most of the former AM stereo broadcasters were no longer stereo or had left the AM band entirely. [...] 

Globally, interest in and use of AM stereo has been declining steadily since the 1990s, as many music stations have continued to move to the FM band. As a result, the vast majority of AM stations broadcast news/talk or sports/sports talk formats. Many of the stations that initially implemented AM stereo are clear-channel 50,000-watt stations, and are more concerned with listening range than stereo sound (although there is no proof that use of AM stereo affects listening range). As a result, these stations still have the necessary equipment to broadcast in stereo, but it is left unused (or converted to HD Radio). Also, many former AM stereo stations were bought up by broadcasting conglomerates, which generally discourage AM stereo broadcasting. In the United States, most stations currently using AM stereo are small, independently owned and broadcast a variety of music format. (wikipedia) (emph. mine)

• • •

It's Monday, so why (oh why) would you burn one of the very few longer non-theme answers you have on a weird, semi-defunct non-thing like AM STEREO? I just don't get it. Did you software insist? It's only the second time the answer has ever appeared in the NYTXW, and for a reason. Just read the "Word of the Day" entry, above. It's not a (widely used) thing. It was supposed to be, but then ... no. AM RADIO, that is a thing, use that answer any time you like, but AM STEREO!? Woof and oof and Please Care More About The Answers You Put In Your Grid. If they aren't familiar or known, to say nothing of beloved, to you, then Don't Use Them, no matter if your wordlist is telling you the answers are valid or not. This is not (not not) a demanding grid, thematically. That is, the theme is basic, only four answers, and is therefore not putting a ton of pressure on the rest of the grid. So why, given the various ways you could've arranged the themers, placed the black squares, etc., did you decide on AM STEREO? Again, you don't have many longer answers to work with, and ... AM STEREO? These longer answers are the ones you would lock down first, right after you'd placed the themers. In fact, *whether* you could lock down *good* longer answers would (or should) play a significant role in where you put your themers in the first place. NODDED AT is not exactly making up for AM STEREO. After that, only LASAGNA and TEABAGS come in at even seven letters. Most of this grid is 3-4-5 (black square count is a robust 44, making the grid pretty choppy and short answer-laden). You *gotta* care about more than just the theme. And if your Spidey-Sense gives you even a hint of "Is that a thing?," then you know the answer: scrap it. I realize AM STEREO is not going to infuriate that many people because it's Monday and the puzzle is easy and who cares. Well, now you know who cares.

As for the theme, yeah, it's fine. SET A NEW RECORD felt awkward, since you'd never describe a DJ as doing that, but the other answers are pretty on-the-money. The revealer placement is weird, but it was also lucky for me, since (solving Downs-only) I rarely get to see an actual revealer on Monday (since most theme answers and revealers run Across). I hit DJS before I had *any* of the themers, and it ended up helping a lot with parsing those long Acrosses. The hardest, by far, was SET A NEW RECORD (again, awkward), but I got there eventually, despite AM STEREO's best efforts to thwart me. All the Downs-only trouble for me came up top, first and foremost with AM STEREO, but also with AFRESH (6D: From the beginning), SAME-DAY (9D: Speedy delivery option), and "BE COOL" (10D: "Don't do that dorky thing you do"). Had to infer ASPS from -SP- before I could get AFRESH or SAME-DAY. AFRESH was tough because EGOS looked like it could've been EGOT. Basically, I really, desperately needed to get TURN THE TABLES locked in before I could work my way back up into all those Downs I'd missed initially. Between TURN THE TABLES and ASPS, I was able to put the squeeze on the recalcitrant Downs, and finish off my Downs-only experience. Can't beat Downs-only for putting some teeth into the Monday solve. Even when the puzzle is less than pleasing, the Downs-only solve is usually still satisfying.

Anything else? Well, the fill is really not that great overall (OLDE IBAR AAS and on and on), but let's not dwell on that. The theme is cute, 3/4 of the themers are good, and AM STEREO is a blight (again, please read the "Word of the Day" entry, above, to see how ... OLDE and SEMI-obsolete it is). OK, cool, see you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Enemy org. in Bond novels / WED 2-15-23 / Peak perks / WW II-era campaign that helped usher in the civil rights movement / African American who recieved a posthumous Medal of Honor for valorous service in WWII / Bodybuilding supplement co. / Star Wars beeper informally / Consoles whose controllers have wrist straps

Constructor: Sean Ziebarth

Relative difficulty: Medium (only because of two proper nouns I didn't know, otherwise, Easy)

[Sorry, I accidentally closed the puzz file before taking a screenshot and so 
rather than type all the letters back in I just "Reveal Entire Puzzle,” hence all the wee eyeballs]

THEME: DOUBLE V (38A: W.W. II-era campaign that helped usher in the civil rights movement ... and a hint to four answers in this puzzle) — four Black Americans associated with the 20th-century Civil Rights Movement in one way or another have the "W" in their names changed, in the grid, to a DOUBLE V:

Theme answers:

• IDA B. VVELLS (17A: Investigative journalist and civil rights pioneer who co-founded the N.A.A.C.P.)
• JAMES BALDVVIN (23A: Novelist and civil rights activist who wrote "Go Tell It on the Mountain")
• GEORGE VVATSON (52A: African American who received a posthumous Medal of Honor for valorous service in W.W. II)
• VV. E. B. DUBOIS (62A: Historian, essayist and civil rights leader who was the first African American to receive a doctorate at Harvard)

Word of the Day: DOUBLE V campaign —

The Double V campaign was a slogan and drive to promote the fight for democracy in overseas campaigns and at the home front in the United States for African Americans during World War II. The Double V refers to the "V for victory" sign prominently displayed by countries fighting "for victory over aggression, slavery, and tyranny," but adopts a second "V" to represent the double victory for African Americans fighting for freedom overseas and at home. The campaign first appeared in the African-American newspaper Pittsburgh Courier on February 7, 1942. Being the largest circulated black newspaper with around 350,000 copies circulated during the war; hence other black newspapers followed suit including the Chicago Defender and the Amsterdam Star News in embracing the motto and symbol of Double V. The slogan was prompted by a response to the letter, "Should I Sacrifice to Live 'Half American?'" written by 26-year-old reader James G. Thompson. It was also in a response to Franklin D. Roosevelt encouraged five editors of the top black newspapers in the United States to reduce their discontent and apathy of the war; to which they did not reduce their discontent but changed to the two pronged approach of the Double V campaign. (wikipedia)

• • •

A proper Black History puzzle for the heart of Black History Month. I've seen this W-to-2V theme conceit before—in a tournament puzzle, many years ago, but the execution here is original and the theme stays remarkably tight. GEORGE VVATSON is a bit of an outlier in the group, not just fame-wise, but in terms of his not being a writer/activist like the others, but considering the DOUBLE V campaign was a WWII-era phenomenon and GEORGE VVATSON was a WWII war hero, he arguably fits the actual theme better than any of the others. At any rate, he'll do. I had to look him up, and I confess I had to look up the DOUBLE V campaign itself. Never heard of it until right now. So the puzzle served an educational function too. So nice when the puzzle that teaches you new things is also a Good Puzzle. The theme was very easy to uncover, in that the NW filled itself in easily and then I was staring at IDA B. at the front of that first themer, and where in the world was that going to go except to IDA B. WELLS (one of the many, many, many names I call my new cat, who was named after Ida Lupino, technically, but "IDA B." is probably the thing I call her most). But where to go with IDA B. V!? Well, I knew immediately (see my aforementioned experience with the split "W"-type theme), and I can't believe it was too hard for the rest of solverdom to figure out either. Outside the two themers I didn't know (the revealer and Watson), the puzzle was Monday easy. It's also 80 words, which is two more words than the normal limit. The result is that you have a very choppy grid with lots and lots of short stuff, especially through the middle. The more short answers a puzzle has, the easier it tends to be. The grid may be a little heavy on the abbrevs., but it's clean overall, and the theme is interesting enough that I don't think minor infelicities in the fill are going to matter much to anyone.

I had to review my finished puzzle to figure out why I didn't get the "Congratulations" message, and it turns out I'd instinctively written in the actual word WARBLE at 50D: Like a songbird instead of the semi-absurd adjective WARBLY. Gotta read your clues thoroughly, and you *really* gotta check your crosses—I should've noticed that ITSE was nonsense at 70A: ___-bitsy (ITSY). I somehow remembered SMERSH, though it feels increasingly ... dated as a crossword answer. Does SMERSH feature in the recent Bond movies??? Google tells me that SMERSH was replaced by SPECTRE except for a brief mention in From Russia With Love (1963). The young among us might be smershing up their faces at SMERSH today, is what I'm saying / guessing. VMI made people smersh up their faces a couple months ago, I remember. The clue mentioned something about the "Keydets" but the initialism VMI meant nothing to a lot of people who then ended up being Naticked. Weird the kerfuffles you remember ... anyway, here we are again with the Keydets (62D: Keydets' sch.). Hopefully you remembered Virginia Military Institute ... if not, the crosses seem undeniable, so that one answer shouldn't have wrecked your puzzle. 

"IT'S OVER!" is an ... interesting choice of fill for the day after Valentine's Day. I like that HEROISM (appropriately) crosses GEORGE VVATSON. The other crosses probably don't really apply to him. That is, I hope he was not an OGRE, and I'm just gonna assume he was not WARBLY. Hope you liked this one, at least A TAD. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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