Natives of Scandinavia / SAT 5-10-25 / Some dragonflies / Pioneer in musical impressionism / Manufactured wooden sheet / Mediterranean plant named for its brightly colored flowers / Fine-grained rock that can be easily cut in any direction / George ___, voted "Coach of the Century" by the International Swimming Hall of Fame / Baby blue, perhaps / Where Ferrari is "RACE," in brief

Constructor: Shaun Phillips

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: DARNERS (29A: Some dragonflies) —

Aeshnidae, also called aeshnids, hawkers, or darners, is a family of dragonflies, found nearly worldwide, with more than 50 genera and over 450 species.

The family includes some of the largest dragonflies. [...] 

There are 41 North American species in 11 genera in this family. Most European species belong to Aeshna. Their American name "darner" stems from the female abdomens looking like a sewing needle, as they cut into plant stem when they lay their eggs through the ovipositor. [...] Their abdomens are long and thin. Most are colored blue and or green, with black and occasionally yellow. Their large, hemispherical, compound eyes touch in the midline and nearly cover their heads. They have an extremely good sight, and are voracious insect predators, using their sharp, biting mouthparts. They are therefore very beneficial to mankind. (wikipedia)

• • •

Yes, that was a Saturday. At least in terms of difficulty, that is what I remember Saturdays being like in the old days. This puzzle is meant to impress (and perhaps daunt) you with its architecture—its weird, brutalist shape (so chunky—you don't see 3x3 black-square chunks too often), and particularly its wide-open white spaces ... which is to say, its very low word count (60; most themeless puzzles come in around 68 or 70). So it's imposing, for sure. And initially, it was virtually impenetrable. That NW corner wouldn't budge much at all. I had ESTER and "I MISSED" but couldn't do much else. I kinda wanted AMID and HISSES but the crosses just didn't look right (particularly that "SM" that ended up being CHARISMA). If I'd wanted to grind it out, I guess I could've hung around up there longer and maybe I could've gotten that corner to fall by going at the short answers in the lower portion (ANN and OWED seem they would've been pretty easy to pick up, for instance), but I bailed out and went where the answers were shortest—that NE corner. This was, and is, the correct instinct for anyone solving a tough puzzle—or any puzzle, frankly. Go At The Short Stuff First. They're higher-percentage shots, and they give you toeholds you often need to get anything else. I stepped into that NE corner, with its little grouping of 4s, and absolutely devoured it—which, in turn, as I'd hoped, set off a chain reaction of correct answers that extended well into the middle of the grid. Short stuff comes first, long stuff comes later. Time and again, the short stuff got me out of the ruts. Anyway, after I got going in the NE, I got stuck again, and had to turn to short answers again (this time in the SE), and then got stuck again and had to hit the short answers in the SW. By pushing inward at the grid from these pockets of short answers, I was able to bring the whole thing to heel ... eventually. Finished up where I started, back in the NW, which doesn't seem too tough in retrospect, but that's the beauty of retrospect—no more blank squares staring at you.

[17A: Pioneer in musical impressionism, despite rejecting the term]

As low word-count puzzles go, the fill on this one was fairly clean, and there were some lovely longer answers. But I still can't say I really enjoyed this. There's just a perverse lot of technically real but strangely niche longer answers. Not sure how anyone's ever going to get excited about stuff like CHIPBOARD (?) (10D: Manufactured wooden sheet) or FREESTONE (?) (25D: Fine-grained rock that can be easily cut in any direction) or SUN ROSE (?) (38A: Mediterranean plant named for its brightly colored flowers). This seems like stuff your wordlist tells you is a thing. All of those answers were compound words that I managed to solve only by inferring their parts. Yes, CHIP and BOARD and FREE and STONE and SUN and ROSE, I know those words, those look ok in the grid, fingers crossed! Sigh. The worst obscurity moment, for me, was the swimming coach (!?!?!?) crossing DARNERS, a thing I've never heard of before. Seen lots of dragonflies in my time, cannot remember ever learning the term DARNERS. I thought maybe "dragonflies" was a sewing term, or else maybe darning was some word for a distinctively dragonfly activity. So mad at HAINES / DARNERS that I did something I never do—I stopped mid-puzzle and looked up HAINES and DARNER to see if I was right. And I was. So I guess the puzzle is not, technically, unfair. But yeeeeeeesh. I mean, swimming coach? (27D: George ___, voted "Coach of the Century" by the International Swimming Hall of Fame). Come on. You could be "Coach of the Millennium," there's no way I'm knowing you.

The one thing about going this low with word count is that you start to rely on certain crutches. One is arcane or otherwise out-of-the-way fill (see above). The other thing—and this is something that absolutely plagued this grid—is plurals, particularly of the "ER" variety. So. Many. -ERS. Look at that run through the middle: HUNGERS FOR, DARNERS, RECRUITERS, UTTERS, BOERS, ELDERS, DODGERS. From UTTERS to HUNGERS you've got a five-step stairway of "S"s at the ends of those answers. And the -ERS don't stop. ESTER, PEEPER, HOME OWNER, USER, ERRS, ALIEN ENCOUNTER ... I think I got 'em all now, though there are still something like a half a dozen -S plurals left to count. Maybe most people won't notice this, but I found it aesthetically off-putting, and so noticeable that it stopped me in my tracks. I took a picture of exactly when I noticed it becoming a problem:

[DODGERS—one of the few absolute gimmes in this grid]

When you see the "-ERS" in isolation like this, before the rest of the grid is filled in, they're more noticeable. Nothing wrong with answers ending in -ERS, per se. But the pile-up ... like I said, it's a crutch. You can't go low without making some compromises. Maybe they were worth it, overall, as there's nothing in the grid that made me want to hurl my computer out the window, and many answers are good: DROVE NUTS, NODDED OFF, HUNGERS FOR ... I liked these just fine.

I imagine this puzzle was much easier for people who know their Mary Poppins. I am not one of those people. I think I saw that movie once as a child, and while I know the tunes you might expect one to know (Supercalifrag-etc., Spoonful of sugar, what not), "LET'S GO FLY A KITE" is not one I could hum for you (7D: "Mary Poppins" tune that begins "With tuppence for paper and strings / You can have your own set of wings"). I don't remember it at all. So "LET'S GO F-" had me stopped cold and guessing all kinds of wrong things. "LET'S GO FOR A RIDE"!? That gave me the "O" that led me to write in OUT for 30A: "I was stuck in traffic," perhaps (LIE). And since FOISTED ON (24D: Shoved down the throat of) and FREESTONE were also mysteries (even with those "F"s in place!), I had to rely on the short answers at the bottom of that corner to help dig me out: BESTS TABS SURE etc. If nothing else, this was a proper Saturday workout.  

[Nope, not ringing a bell]

A few more things:

• 6A: Unappetizing food (GLOP) — wrote in SLOP but was very aware that it might be GLOP, so the "error" didn't really faze me.
• 20A: Baby blue, perhaps (PEEPER) — brutal. No one ever refers to a single "baby blue" when talking about someone's eyes. Or a single PEEPER, for that matter.

["I was shakin' in my shoes / Whenever she flashed those baby blues..."]

• 19D: One side in an 1899-1902 war (BOERS) — one of only a handful of merciful gimmes
• 32D: Some camping excursions (RV TRIPS) — off the "T" I wrote in OUTINGS. Seemed fine. :/
• 1D: Like American bacon, but not Canadian bacon (CRISPED) — this should say "maybe," shouldn't it? I mean, I've seen some pretty flaccid American bacon in my time, and as for Canadian bacon, if I want to crisp it, I'm gonna crisp it, by hook or by crook, and you can't stop me.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

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Discontinued competitor of Coke Zero / MON 8-12-24 / When repeated, sound effect for Cookie Monster / Cryptid in the Scottish Highlands / "Ho, ho, ho!" hollerer / Bluey or Snoopy / Indian yogurt drink / Arkham ___ institution for many Batman foes / "Billions" airer, for short

Constructor: Shaun Phillips

Relative difficulty: Medium (solved Downs-only), though I haven't solved a crossword in nine days, so maybe I'm just rusty 

THEME: "ARE YOU FOR REAL?" (32A: "Seriously ?!" ... or what one might ask of the answers to starred clues in this puzzle?) — beings that aren't real ... or are they? (49D: The answers to the starred clues in this puzzle ... or are they? = MYTHS)

Theme answers:

• TOOTH FAIRY (17A: *One leaving money under a pillow)
• IMAGINARY FRIEND (22A: *Hobbes, vis-à-vis Calvin)
• LOCH NESS MONSTER (46A: *Cryptid in the Scottish Highlands)
• SANTA CLAUS (53A: *"Ho, ho, ho!" hollerer)

Word of the Day: PEPSI ONE (10D: Discontinued competitor of Coke Zero) —

Pepsi One, corporately styled PEPSI ONE (so named because it contains one calorie per eight-fluid ounce [230 ml] serving), was a sugar-free cola, marketed by PepsiCo in the United States as an alternative to regular Pepsi and Diet Pepsi. // On June 30, 1998, the artificial sweetener acesulfame potassium (Ace-K) was approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration. PepsiCo responded within one hour, announcing the introduction of Pepsi One (which reached store shelves the following October). The original formulation was sweetened with aspartame and acesulfame potassium. This new variety was based upon an earlier product (sold in other countries) called Pepsi Max, but it featured a formula and flavor profile developed specifically for the U.S. market. // The launch of Pepsi One included an advertising campaign featuring the slogan "just one calorie." Subsequently, comedian Tom Green appeared as the spokesperson in a series of television advertisements that began airing in April 1999 [...] In January 2014, Consumer Reports magazine tested levels of the chemical 4-methylimidazole (4-MeI) – a potential carcinogen – in various beverages in the United States and found that Pepsi ONE was one of two drinks that contained the chemical in excess of 29 micrograms per can or bottle, with that being California Proposition 65's daily allowed amount for foods without a warning label. // In mid-2015, after its sister product Diet Pepsi had changed to using sucralose and Ace-K as sweeteners instead of aspartame, Pepsi One was discontinued. PepsiCo wrote on its website that "Pepsi ONE has been discontinued. We regularly evaluate our product portfolio to find efficiencies, and we have decided to remove Pepsi ONE from the marketplace. Pepsi ONE has very limited distribution and will be out of the marketplace by start of the year 2015, and in some markets product inventory has already been exhausted." (wikipedia)

• • •

[at Moby Dick restaurant on the pier (please note 
looming stranger / serial killer in background)]

Hello, solvers. We now return you to our regularly scheduled program, i.e. me writing this blog every damn day! I can't say I missed it ... no, that's not true. I did miss it. A lot. I didn't miss getting up every day at 3:30am to write, true, but I did miss writing. And solving. And complaining and what not. I'm at a bit of a loss without my daily ritual. But if you gotta be at a bit of a loss, I'll tell ya, Santa Barbara is the place to do it. Perfect weather Every Single Day. Some morning fog, sure, but that just gave the seaside some ambience, and made running / walking by the ocean (every morning!) very, very comfortable. It was nice to see my parents, and my sister, and nephews nieces etc. We've been doing these family summer trips for over twenty years, and everyone's Slowing Down now, which is Just Fine with me. I like my vacations to feature a few scheduled events and then a whole lot of nothing. I walked a ton (very very walkable city), ate a ton (very very eatable city), and read a ton (well, two books—that's pretty good!). Mainly I made friends with birds. Every day we'd go down to the beach and hang out with the birds. You've got your usual gulls, and crows (everywhere!), and shorebirds (like curlews), and then egrets and pelicans and kingfishers and swallows (under the pier), but my favorite of all were the very visible, very sullen, occasionally loud black-crowned night herons, who hung out in numbers right by the running path. I don't think I'd ever seen one before. The first one I saw, I thought it was hurt, because it seemed too close to people, but nope, there were a bunch of them hanging out right by the street, around an abandoned pool of some sort, I think. Anyway, they look like grumpy old men, which may be why I related to them. Adorable.

Other than black-crowned night herons, the most interesting thing I saw in Santa Barbara was seals (or maybe sea lions—a bunch of them, just hanging out in the water about 10 yards or so from shore ... lurking ... plotting). Oh, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who was right in front of me in line for ice cream. Wild. Don't ask me what she ordered because I do not remember. I was too busy thinking, "Wait, is this real?" But it was. She was. More real than the TOOTH FAIRY, I assure you.  I ended up ordering Honey Almond Crunch and it was delicious. The ice cream place was called RORI'S, which is one of those names that gets crossword constructors thinking, "Be more famous! I could use you!" Neither RORI nor RORIS has ever appeared in the NYTXW. For good reason. Too regional. But if RORI'S ever went national, I guarantee you'd start seeing it in grids almost immediately. A name built for crosswords. Crossword Crunch would be a good ice cream flavor. What flavor would Crossword Crunch be? Suggestions welcome (though if your ingredient list doesn't include OREO, don't expect to be taken seriously).

Today's theme didn't feel like much of a theme. I mean, the core of it is just "imaginary creatures," which is too insubstantial to qualify as a theme, so I guess it's the revealer ("ARE YOU FOR REAL?") that is supposed to put this one over the top. I dunno. I guess. I can't say I disliked it, but it did seem pretty, uh, vanilla (ice cream callback!). I think the puzzle kind of lost me with the "bonus" themer (MYTHS). You can feel the puzzle really straining there to convince you that the theme is legit. Feels like an answer that was maybe incidental / accidental, that they then tried to conscript into thematic service. The revealer was OK, but that second "revealer" went too far. Felt forced. And the clue! "... or are they?" Yes, they are, they are MYTHS, what are you doing? 

As for difficulty ... well, technically I failed the Downs-only assignment today, as I had LADED at 46D: Filled with cargo (LADEN), which gave me DONE (at 60-Across) instead of NONE, and since DONE is a perfectly ordinary word, I didn't blink—until I didn't get the "You Completed the Puzzle!" message. Then I blinked. Had to hunt my mistake. Bah. But besides that one square, I got through it OK, with two significant sticking points. The first, lesser sticking point came around TSKS (ugh) SKIER KERRY, the last of which I wasn't sure how to spell (KERRI?), the second of which had a "?" clue (7D: Person who might need a lift?), and the first of which is just a horrid piece of (plural!) crosswordese (hence the "ugh") (6A: Reprimanding sounds). The bigger sticking point was NEW MOM / BUM / BUNION, with BUM being the real issue. Could not get a word meaning [Backside] from -U-. I think of BUM as primarily British, so ... yeah, a hint there ("to a Brit") would've been helpful. Also, working Downs-only, I though NEW-OM was NEWSOM (as in California governor Gavin), so NEW MOM (!) came, eventually, as a big surprise (38A: One on maternity leave). But I weathered that part and finished without further incident (except the LADED incident). Had ATAD before ABIT, but that's ordinary stuff (36D: Ever so slightly).

Notes:

• 10D: Discontinued competitor of Coke Zero (PEPSI ONE) — very on-brand for the NYTXW, debuting an answer only after it is well and truly bygone. Mwah! Never stop being your beautiful belated self, puzzle!
• 31D: When repeated, sound effect for Cookie Monster ("NOM!") — a fine answer, but oof, a truly horrible dupe of "Monster" (which features prominently in one of the theme answers: LOCH NESS MONSTER)
• 55D: Summer Olympics powerhouse (USA) — a fitting clue for this day after the Summer 2024 Olympics closing ceremonies. The USA was indeed a powerhouse once again this year, finishing with more medals (by far) than any other country (126, including 40 gold, to 2nd place China's 91). I didn't catch much of it, though I did get to watch crossword favorite Simone BILES (5) dismantle the competition in the women's all-around. She seemed to be on a different plane. Unreal. Mythical, almost. (just trying to tie it in, here...)

• 47D: Olympic snowboarder White (SHAUN) — it must be pretty hard to lay off signing your name to your grid. I mean, the grid comes together in a certain way, you get an opportunity, you gotta take it, right? Or no? Anyway, yes, I noticed, SHAUN Phillips. I noticed. My best friend's name is SHAUN, so in her honor, I'll let this bit of self-indulgence slide.
• 43A: Frozen ocean water (SEA ICE) — when you solve Downs-only, you get to discover little flukes in words and phrases that you might not notice otherwise. For instance, the fact that SEA ICE is just one letter off from SEANCE, which is what I Really wanted this answer to be for a bit (before A BIT made it impossible).

Glad to be back. See you next time (which, if my math is right, is tomorrow).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. just a few more vacation highlights

[at the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles]

[some off-the-menu mezcal deliciousness that my bartender called "Agua Bendita" ("Holy Water")]

[Santa Barbara has a Goodwill]

[with my sister, Amy]

[from my balcony]

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Ticketmaster alternative / WED 7-24-24 / Fashion designer Cohn with an eponymous rhinestone-encrusted suit / Small vessel in the deep ocean / Alfred for whom a coffee chain is named / Joystick-controlled contraption depicted in this puzzle

Constructor: Shaun Phillips

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium 

THEME: CLAW MACHINE GAME (35A: Joystick-controlled contraption depicted in this puzzle) — black squares in the upper middle are supposed to be the "claw" and I guess the "+"-shaped black square formation is supposed to be one of the prizes in the machines. Maybe the black square formations on the bottom are involved too, I don't know ... Also:

Theme answers:

• "HOLD ON A MINUTE" (5D: "Wait!" ... or hopeful words while playing a 35-Across?)
• CRANE OPERATOR (10D: Professional who might expect to do well with a 35-Across?)
• AMUSEMENT ARCADE (54A: Setting for a 35-Across)

Word of the Day: NUDIE Cohn (49D: Fashion designer Cohn with an eponymous rhinestone-encrusted suit) —

Nuta Kotlyarenko (Ukrainian: Нута Котляренко; December 15, 1902 – May 9, 1984), known professionally as Nudie Cohn, was a Ukrainian-American tailor who designed decorative rhinestone-covered suits, known popularly as "Nudie Suits", and other elaborate outfits for some of the most famous celebrities of his era. He also became famous for his outrageous customized automobiles. [...] Cohn's designs brought the already-flamboyant western style to a new level of ostentation with the liberal use of rhinestones and themed images in chain stitch embroidery. One of his early designs, in 1962, for singer Porter Wagoner, was a peach-colored suit featuring rhinestones, a covered wagon on the back, and wagon wheels on the legs. He offered the suit to Wagoner for free, confident that the popular performer would serve as a billboard for his clothing line. His confidence proved justified and the business grew rapidly. In 1963 the Cohns relocated their business to a larger facility on Lankershim Boulevard in North Hollywood and renamed it "Nudie's Rodeo Tailors". //

Many of Cohn's designs became signature looks for their owners. Among his most famous creations was Elvis Presley's $10,000 gold lamé suit worn by the singer on the cover of his 50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can't Be Wrong album. Cohn created Hank Williams' white cowboy suit with musical notations on the sleeves, and Gram Parsons' infamous suit for the cover of the Flying Burrito Brothers' 1969 album The Gilded Palace of Sin, featuring pills, poppies, marijuana leaves, naked women, and a huge cross. He designed the iconic costume worn by Robert Redford in the 1979 film Electric Horseman, which was exhibited by the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. // Many of the film costumes worn by Roy Rogers and Dale Evans were Nudie designs. John Lennon was a customer, as were John Wayne, Gene Autry, George Jones, Cher, Ronald Reagan, Elton John, Robert Mitchum, Pat Buttram, Tony Curtis, Michael Landon, Glen Campbell, Michael Nesmith, Hank Snow, Hank Thompson, and numerous musical groups, notably America and Chicago. ZZ Top band members Billy Gibbons and Dusty Hill sported Nudie suits on the cover photo of their 1975 album Fandango!. (wikipedia)

• • •

There's not nearly enough pictorial oomph here to make this endeavor worthwhile. You've got a kind of claw at the top of the grid, but nothing else evokes "claw machine," and the claw just looks like an ordinary black-square formation anyway, so ... I dunno. Very little visual impact, and very slight resemblance to the "game" in question. And that's the next big problem. "Game." It's a "claw machine." That's what it's called. The wikipedia entry: "Claw machine." It appears to be "crane machine" in some contexts, but mostly, it's a "claw machine." It is decidedly not a "CLAW MACHINE GAME." Yes, you need "game" to get you to a grid-spanning 15 letters, but oof you gotta get the terminology just right or Don't Do The Puzzle. This problem—the "slightly off" / "extra word" problem—kept happening, over and over with the themers today. Every. Single. One of the themers has a word in it that doesn't quite work or relate or make sense. Actually, CRANE OPERATOR is OK. I had OPERATOR and no idea what the first word could be (SMOOTH?), but when I got CRANE, I thought "OK, yeah, I guess that works." But "HOLD ON A ___?" Why MINUTE? You definitely don't need to hold on that long. Arbitrary. And then there's AMUSEMENT. What in the world is an "AMUSEMENT ARCADE?" It's an ... arcade. Maybe it's a video arcade? A penny arcade? Looks like "AMUSEMENT ARCADE" is in fact the title of the wikipedia entry on the general category of arcades, but I've never heard that term used, so I had ARCADE and literally no idea what was supposed to come before it. Forever. I had -EMENT before AMUSEMENT occurred to me. I don't think. AMUSEMENT ARCADE is a foul, since it's a real term, but it's not being terribly in-the-language added to my overall feeling that the themers were slightly to very ... off. Everywhere. All the time. And worst of all in the revealer itself, with the addition of the extremely redundant "GAME."

Fill-wise ... well, a lotta names. Right out of the box, once again (as with yesterday), we're inundated with proper nouns. STUBHUB over PIER ONE crossing UEFA, followed quickly by JOANN over O'SHEA. That's five names before you ever get out of the NW (I'm not counting OSLO as a name since OSLO has pretty much achieved the status of background noise in crossword puzzles). I knew all the names, including STUBHUB (which I got immediately, with no crosses in place), so I flew through that part, but I could tell that it was gonna be thorny for some. The NE corner was less name-y but also less clean, with the crosswordesey EENIE and ESAU and the improbable MINISUB (20A: Small vessel in the deep ocean) and the apostrophe-S-less PEET (22A: Alfred for whom a coffee chain is named) and the awkward RERINSE. And why doesn't TECHIES have something in its clue implying slang (8A: Some experts on viruses)? You wanna abbreviate to TECHIES, the clue should indicate that you're going slangy, and it doesn't. Sigh. The rest of the puzzle was solid enough. Highlight for me was NUDIE, for sure. Great new (and non-porno) clue for that one. I learned about the NUDIE Suit by listening to "A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs," specifically the episodes about Gram Parsons. I went from "how the hell am I supposed to know designers!?" to "OMG the NUDIE Suit! Yes!" pretty quickly on that one. Those suits are flash. They scream Americana. All performers should wear them (contemporary artists like Lady Gaga, Kesha, Taylor Swift, and crossword favorite Lil Nas X all have). Love love love. The rest of the puzzle didn't do nearly so much for me.

Not much difficulty today for me. Misread 7D: "Cool ___!" as merely ["Cool!"]—that is, somehow didn't see the blank space following "Cool"—and was So Mad that the answer was BEANS. "The expression is 'Cool BEANS!,' not just 'BEANS!' Who is saying just 'BEANS!'? Have we shortened it to just 'BEANS' now!? Damn slang changes, I can't keep up mutter mutter mutter." But no, my eye just missed the blank space. Not reading clues correctly has caused me more pain over the years than simple ignorance ever did. Had AJAR before A TAD, that was weird (42A: Ever so slightly). I guess my brain just supplied "open" at the end (or beginning) of that clue. Balked at spelling CAROTID, even though, looking at it now, I'm not sure how else I would've spelled it. I left the first two vowels blank because I didn't want to F' up and I figured the crosses would take care of things. And they did. Had "IS IT?" before "IT IS?," since "IS IT?" reads way more question-y on its surface than "IT IS?" does. "IS IT?" has question syntax, whereas you need to mentally supply the question mark to make "IT IS?" a question. Anyway, this created minor havoc around the awful (truly awful) Biz OPS (60A: Biz ___ (corporate team, informally)). Are "corporate" people never embarrassed by this jargon? BizOPS sounds like '90s hip-hop slang that got "bygone" real quick. Like a variation on "bops" that someone tried to make happen in late '95 and that maybe caught on at a handful of east coast radio stations for like three months. "We got some phat bizops comin' at ya in the next hour..." Or if Biz Markie had a spy movie-inspired alter ego: Biz OPS! That would've been cool. As "corporate" lingo, though, it's just sad.

Bullets:

• 15A: Longtime home decor chain with a name that anagrams to PIONEER (PIER ONE) — always hate the "anagrams to" clues, but I guess PIER ONE is sufficiently bygone now that people need help. Not sure why, but I was leafing (digitally) through a list of "chains that no longer exist" just the other day and there was PIER ONE and I thought "wait, that's not still out on the Vestal Parkway?" Like, literally, we had one in town and I just assumed it was still there. If a PIER ONE disappears from the Parkway, does it make a sound? Apparently not. Circuit City, that disappearance registered. But PIER ONE ... poof, just gone. I bought some really ugly blue-tinted wine glasses there once. That is my PIER ONE memory. What's yours!? [side note: it's really "Pier 1," numeral "1" ... I was trying to figure out why PIER ONE looks so bad. And that's why. This spelling issue makes today's clue actually wrong. Flat-out wrong. You can represent a number as a word in the puzzle, but anagramming is a very specific thing involving the actual characters of the actual name, so ... [annoying buzzer sound!] this clue is DQd]

• 3D: Soccer org. that runs the Champions League (UEFA) — knew this one but my first spelling of it came out UIFA. Like FIFA and UEFA had a baby: Baby UIFA. I think I was under the influence of other famous UI-starting words, like the UINTA Mountains of Utah, or ... uh ... (do not say "UIES" we all know that is not and has never been a thing no matter how many times the crossword tries to make it so)
• 32D: "Your" of yore (THY) — I just like this clue. I like its lilting rhyminess. I also just like the phrase "of yore." As you're (!) probably aware of by now.

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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