Boozy holiday confection / SUN 11-3-24 / Word with the wave of a wand / Tower in a port / Relatives of narwhals / Calming oil compound, for short / Popular video game franchise since 1997, for short / Actress Krishnan of South Indian cinema / Land inhabited by the Alutiiq people / Doppler effect phenomenon / Eponym of a popular root beer brand / Like Thor, shortly after arriving on Earth in 2011's "Thor"

Constructor: Sid Sivakumar

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "Can I Have a Raise?" — words meaning "money" (which appear in circled squares) hop over one shaded square each, creating a literal "raise"—or PAY BUMP, which is what the shaded squares spell out (when read from top to bottom):

Theme answers:

• ALASKA PENINSULA ("kale" jumps the "P") (23A: Land inhabited by the Alutiiq people)
• GODDAUGHTER ("dough" jumps the "A") (39A: Zoë Kravitz, to Marisa Tomei)
• FREQUENCY SHIFT ("cash" jumps the "Y") (46A: Doppler effect phenomenon)
• GUTENBERG ("tender" jumps the "B") (69A: Inventor of the printing press)
• MOOD CONGRUENCE ("green" jumps the "U") (86A: Psychological effect whereby memories are recalled more easily when they match one's current emotional state)
• CIVIC-MINDED ("coin" jumps the "M") (93A: Conscientious of one's community)
• SWITCHED PARTIES ("cheddar" jumps the "P") (115A: Moved across the aisle)

Word of the Day: The Franklin Mountains (7D: Texas city at the foot of the Franklin Mountains = EL PASO) —

The Franklin Mountains of Texas (Spanish: Sierras de los Mansos) are a small range 23 miles (37 km) long, 3 miles (5 km) wide that extend from El Paso, Texas, north into New Mexico. The Franklins were formed due to crustal extension related to the Cenozoic Rio Grande rift. Although the present topography of the range and adjoining basins is controlled by extension during rifting in the last 10 million years, faults within the range also record deformation during the Laramide orogeny, between 85 and 45 million years ago.

The highest peak is North Franklin Peak at 7,192 feet (2,192 m). Much of the range is part of the Franklin Mountains State Park. The mountains are composed primarily of sedimentary rock with some igneous intrusions. Geologists refer to them as tilted-block fault mountains and in them can be found 1.25 billion-year-old Precambrian rocks, the oldest in Texas. (wikipedia)

• • •

It's pretty literal, this one. Consistent and well made, but also pretty dull. The gimmick is awfully simple and there's really no element of surprise here, nothing fun to discover once you grok the basic premise. Well, there's one surprise, which is MOOD CONGRUENCE, whatever the hell that is (86A: Psychological effect whereby memories are recalled more easily when they match one's current emotional state). If you need to write an entire paragraph in order to justify your clue or make it make sense, that's a good sign you should rethink the answer itself. Seriously, that clue is three times longer than every other theme clue LOL. I'm sure this so-called "Psychological effect" is a real thing to someone, somewhere, but it really looks like something an uncurated wordlist coughed up ... I'm reading the wikipedia entry for MOOD CONGRUENCE and there's nothing up front about "memories" at all, so ... no idea what this clue is doing. Some super-specialized stuff. Real outlier. The rest of the theme answers were fine as answers, but the basic concept here, however neatly executed, just didn't seem that interesting. Very one-note. I can see what's happening ... and it keeps happening. Also, I made the mistake of reading the "Puzzle Notes," which spelled out the shaded-squares portion of the gimmick. 

Would've been much more fun to discover that on my own. Also, only crosswords think "KALE" is a slang term for "money." Never seen it anywhere else. Maybe in some hardboiled crime fiction of the '20s. That's possible. But KALE makes even CHEDDAR seem modern (it isn't). I can't say the idea isn't cute. I like that the revealer is actually built into the theme answers themselves—that is, if PAY BUMP played like a regular revealer (that is, if it were its own separate answer), the puzzle wouldn't have any charm at all. If you're jumping over letters, those letters really need to do something, and today, they do. So it all makes sense. It just wasn't terribly exciting. Not bad. Just ho-hum.

Aside from MOOD CONGRUENCE, which I had to get almost entirely from crosses, there were only two thorny patches today, and "thorny" is perhaps exaggerating the amount of pain involved. The first such patch was in and around BARQ (such a horrible answer to begin with—the root beer is BARQ'S; BARQ on its own is ridiculous). I had -A-- for the [Eponym of a popular root beer brand] and wrote in DAD'S. Now, DAD'S is the full name of the root beer, not an "eponym," but, see, I just ... I ... it was wishful thinking, in that I was wishing (desperately) that 41A: Word with the wave of a wand might be TADA because, well, the first thing that occurred to me there was ABRA, and there is no more horrible piece of crossword fill than ABRA. It is not, as the clue claims, a "word." It's an incantation partial. Oof. I die a little every time I see it in a grid. And so my brain willed it away. Refused to accept it. "Maybe we can write in DAD'S and TADA and everything will be OK." Nice try, brain. DAD'S gave me --D for 30A: Member of the fam, and the only answer I could think of there was ... DAD. And DAD crossing DAD'S seemed, let's say, unlikely. So I tore it out, worked out SIB, then BARQ, then sighed the world's deepest sigh as I defeatedly wrote in ABRA. Allow me to resigh. Sigh. You know how you can tell ABRA is completely invalid? First of all, would you really spell "Abracadabra" as two words? When have you ever seen that? And second, imagine seeing CADABRA in the grid ... yeah, that's right: you can't. No such "word" as CADABRA, so no such "word" as ABRA. Case closed on this worst of all possible "words." (Note: this is the fifth ABRA of the year, more than any year since 1991; not a promising trend!)

The other (minor) trouble spot today came from Pirate's Cove (you know ... the bar on Love Boat ... where Isaac, Your Bartender works (nights) ... no Love Boat fans, eh? Philistines ...).  

Annnnyway, I expected my pirate to make one sound and she made another, and man you would not think a three-letter [Word from a pirate] could cause significant havoc, but ARR(gh)! What does the pirate say? The pirate says "ARR." That is what the pirate says. Yes, ARR is usually [Flight board abbr.] or [Sheet music abbr.], but four times in recent years it has been a "word from a pirate" (three [Pirate's exclamation] and then one [Talk Like a Pirate Day greeting] earlier this year). AYE, on the other hand, while very sailory, is not very piratey. AYE has made 155 appearances in the modern (i.e. Shortz/Fagliano) era, and only once (once!) before today has "pirate" been used in the clue (the other time being only just this year). So for decades and decades, pirates never ever said AYE in a crossword. If they said anything, they said ARR. And now all of a sudden in 2024 they're all good little obedient sailors!? Bah. Give AYE back to Popeye and the Scots and people voting in favor of things, and let pirates say weird pirate things. Things like ARR. 


Notes and explainers:

• 23A: Land inhabited by the Alutiiq people (ALASKA PENINSULA) — minor issue, but I thought it was the ALASKAN PENINSULA, with an "N." And in some places (like the NASA website!), that is how it's spelled. But the official name of said peninsula appears not to have that extra adjectival "N" at the end of ALASKA.
• 52A: Actress Krishnan of South Indian cinema (TRISHA) — never heard of her, but she's a huge star. They don't call you "The Queen of India" for nothing, I'm guessing. Look at all these damn awards! According to wikipedia, she works primarily in Tamil and Telugu films. 

• 81A: Word following a comma in an alphabetized list (THE) — my brain could not process this clue at all. But yes, in an index, say, you will see book or movie titles that begin with "THE" written out this way (with the THE following a comma). Here are a couple examples from the index of a book that just happens to be sitting next to my desk—David Thomson's How to Watch a Movie:

• 109A: Popular video game franchise since 1997, for short (GTA) — stands for Grand Theft Auto. You get to do horrible things to people, if I remember correctly (I haven't played or even thought about the game since roughly the turn of the century)
• 18D: One willing to take the hit? (STONER) — a "hit" on a joint or pipe, for pot (marijuana) smokers. You probably knew that, but sometimes these idioms will be strange to non-native speakers, so I'm explaining, just in case. Although I'm hardly the one to be explaining this stuff, as last time I "took a hit" was ... well, before the last time I played GTA, that's for sure.
• 19D: Like Thor, shortly after arriving on Earth in 2011's "Thor" (TASED) — about as niche a film clue as I've ever seen. Look, you know TASED evokes awful things, most notably police violence, so maybe just don't use it, rather than asking us to remember one specific scene in an old superhero movie. There are too many superhero movies for anyone to be able to keep track of this junk. There have been four Thor movies alone. 34 films in the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe). 10 more in development. Make it stop. 
• 73D: Sign of a packed house (SRO) — Sold Right Out!*
• 88D: Sites of conch piercings (EARS) — so ... [Sites of piercings]. You didn't need "conch" there at all. So why is it there? To misdirect me? Toward the ocean? Well, that didn't work, just FYI. ("conch piercing" involves the piercing of the upper ear cartilage)

• 94D: Cushion upon which a ball rests (INSOLE) — "ball" as in "the ball of your foot."
• 104D: What's seemingly impossible to find when storing leftovers (LID) — I'm not a particularly well organized person and yet this is not a problem I've ever had. The lids go with the containers ... why are you separating them? 
• 87D: Calming oil compound, for short (CBD) — short for "cannabidiol," a compound found in marijuana. This is CBD's seventh NYTXW appearance in just two years (debuted in 2022).
• 73A: Where a ham might be on display (STAGE) — a "ham" is a bad (over-) actor.
• 118D: Tower in a port (TUG) — this is like the old trick of using "flower" to clue a river. Not "tower" like Tower of Babel or Tower of London, but "tower" as in "thing that tows." A TUG (boat) tows. It's a tower.

I'm headed up to Rochester today to see piano prodigy Yunchan Lim play Bach's "Goldberg Variations," which makes me sound way more "cultured" than I am. But sometimes I do indeed like to leave the Love Boat and experience the broader artistic world. Also, sometimes I just need to get out of town for a day, and the kid can play, apparently, so I'm excited. 

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*I know, I know ... SRO actually stands for "Seats Ran Out"**

**I know, I know ... 

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1994 single by Hole whose cover art depicts a miniature wedding dress and veil / SUN 2-18-24 / Hindu wedding adornment that's said to get darker the more the newlyweds love each other / Marine predator often seen near shorelines / Windy part of a kite? / Comedy character who once asked the U.N. secretary general if Disneyland was part of the U.N. / Lifesaving mission, for short / One fast-tracked in an interview pool / Eschewed pork and shellfish, say / Comics sound when something is snatched

Constructor: Sid Sivakumar

Relative difficulty: Very Easy

THEME: "The Inside Scoop" — parts of words that *sound* like another word for "gossip" ("scoop") can be found "inside" longer words and crossing grape varieties, which form a "vine" at the middle of the puzzle (running from top to bottom of the grid); thus, those word parts ("roomer" "tock" etc.) are HEARD THROUGH / THE GRAPEVINE (13D: With 61-Down, like some gossip ... as represented phonetically by each set of shaded squares?) in two senses; "gossip" (which those word parts represent) is heard through the grapevine (metaphorically), and the word parts, which literally run "through" (i.e. intersect) the "grapevine" in this puzzle, must be "heard" to be understood (as spelled, they are often gibberish and never look like the words they sound like): 

The "grapevine":

• MERLOT (8D: Variety used to make Bordeaux wine) 
• CONCORD (47D: Variety commonly found in jellies and pies)
• MUSCAT (96D: Variety that shares its name with a Mideast capital) 

The "scoop":

• GROOMERS ("rumor") (31A: Some kennel personnel)
• OVERSTOCKS ("talk") (44A: Orders more of than necessary)
• JUDICIOUS ("dish") (67A: Prudent)
• UNDERTONES ("dirt") (82A: Things that perceptive people might pick up)
• REVENUES ("news") (101A: Proceeds)

Word of the Day: "DOLL PARTS" (78D: 1994 single by Hole whose cover art depicts a miniature wedding dress and veil) —

"Doll Parts" is a song by American alternative rock band Hole, written by vocalist and rhythm guitarist Courtney Love. The song was released as the band's sixth single and second from their second studio album, Live Through This, in November 1994 to accompany the band's North American tour. It was also the first single to be released following the death of bassist Kristen Pfaff in June 1994.

Love wrote the song in late 1991, soon after she met Kurt Cobain, and has admitted that its lyrics were about her insecurity of his romantic interest in her. It became one of the band's most popular songs, peaking on the US Billboard Modern Rock Tracks at number 4, and is considered by fans and critics alike as one of Hole's signature tracks.

In September 2021, Rolling Stone ranked the track 208 in their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. [...] The music video for "Doll Parts" was directed by Samuel Bayer—who had also directed music videos for The Smashing Pumpkins and Nirvana—and who Hole commissioned following the death of bassist Kristen Pfaff. Jennifer Finch of L7 is featured as the bassist in the video. Bayer has said that he wanted it "evoke the feeling of death" and used ideas conceived by Love throughout the video.

Love's ideas included a large amount of doll imagery, herself "in a babydoll dress looking demure while playing guitar on a bed" and "walking in a bleak backyard passing a children's table set for a tea party." Bayer designed the garden scenes to be "decaying" and added "a hundred plaster-wrapped dolls dangling from trees." Other scenes [feature] a young blonde boy, a reference "meant to invoke Kurt [Cobain]", and footage of the band performing the song. Most of the video was shot in black-and-white and interspersed with various color shots. Two edits of "Doll Parts" have been broadcast—an original edit and a "producer's version."

The video for "Doll Parts" was nominated for Best Alternative Video at the 1995 MTV Video Music Awards but lost to "Buddy Holly" by Weezer. (wikipedia)

• • •

Hello. I am returned from my Great Minnesota Adventure, i.e. visiting my best friends and seeing Madonna—a concert we were *supposed* to see last summer, before the whole latter part of her tour got rescheduled due to health concerns. None of those health concerns were on display Tuesday, though, wow, please god let me look half that good and move a quarter that well at 65. Not terribly convenient to have the concert rescheduled to the middle of a work week in February, but oh well, best friends are best friends and Madonna is Madonna and teaching can be done remotely now and you do what you gotta do. But I'm glad to be back home and back to solving / blogging (thanks to Clare / Mali / Eli / Rafa for their usual great stand-in work). So the puzzle I get for my return to action is this one and ... hmm. It's a bit of a mess. Do three grape types, straight up and down, really make a "vine"? The puzzle relies very heavily on a visual that never quite comes into focus. Oh ... I see they've just drawn a vine on the grid in the app (and probably in the paper version as well). 

Huh. Seems like a cheat. Three straight up-and-down grape types—not a compelling vine. I mean, if you're just gonna draw the vine on there, why do you need the grape types at all? Just draw some grapes on there too and be done with it. Those grape types are totally arbitrary anyway. These visuals that the NYTXW seems to be relying on more and more—whistles and bells and pasted-on decorations—seems like so much shiny spangle designed to distract you from the fact that the puzzle is actually no better than it ever was. Gamify the puzzle, that seems to be the idea. Shrug. If you like that sort of thing...

I was vaguely aware of italicized clues on grape varieties, but otherwise had no idea what I was supposed to be seeing until I got the revealer, which (thankfully) was very easy to get. I could see, after ROOMER and TOK, that there was some kind of "gossip" pun theme going on .... and I could tell from the italicized clues on the grapes that grapes ... were involved. But I needed that revealer to tie it together. Playing on the meaning of "heard" does elevate the theme somewhat. Would likely have been easy (easier?) to have the actual words themselves ("rumor," "talk," etc.) run "THROUGH / THE GRAPEVINE," and you'd still have had a coherent theme, but this puzzle is more ambitious, taking those words and allowing us to see them only by hearing them. So the gossip must be literally heard to be understood. It's a nice touch. I mean, DIC really does look ridiculous on its own, and had me wondering what "dick!" had to do with any of this, but within the word itself, DIC = "dish," so, fair. The puzzle title also does a reasonable job this week of conveying the theme, as the shaded letters sound like synonyms for "scoop" (i.e. "gossip") and are buried "inside" longer answers. So there are things to admire thematically. I'm just not buying the drawn-on "vine" bit.

The fill was a mixed bag. No real SLOP, but some sloppy repetition ("I PLAN TO" almost alongside SPEAK TO across the grid from AKIN TO, with TOO semi-ironically in between) and some forced colloquialism ("AIN'T SO" / ONE PER / RESCUE OP) and some dated slang (HATERADE). SAND SHARK feels super-"My Uncurated Wordlist Taught Me This" (4D: Marine predator often seen near shorelines) (it's a debut, though it did appear in a Cox/Rathvon cryptic back in 2011). I liked YOINK (hard not to like YOINK) (28D: Comics sound when something is snatched) and parsing GOONIN was a not uncompelling adventure (41D: "Well, don't wait out here!"). My favorite answer was probably the most absurd answer in the grid—absurd for being easily the most ... I wanna say "arcane" or "obscure" thing in the grid, which seem like appropriate enough words for a song that peaked at #58 on the Billboard Hot 100 29 years ago, but if you're a Gen-Xer (guilty), then "DOLL PARTS" will loom somewhat larger in your memory, perhaps, than the middling chart success would seem to warrant. That song was everywhere in the mid-90s. I wasn't particularly a Hole fan in 1994 (that wouldn't happen til Celebrity Skin (1998)), but the album that "DOLL PARTS" was on (Live Through This) came out the same week (!) that Kurt Cobain died, and since Hole was fronted by Cobain's wife (Courtney Love)—well, the drama of the moment seemed to shine a spotlight on the song, especially once it was released as a single later in the year. Of course, if you were too old for this moment, or too young, there's a good chance that this song title was meaningless to you. These things happen. If it didn't make you happy, I understand. But for me, remembering that Hole song was one of the more pleasurable parts of the solving experience.

My favorite wrong answer of the day was a doozy. I didn't know that the vine answers were grapes, necessarily, or that a "vine" was involved at all, so when I saw [47D: Variety commonly found in jellies and pies] and I had CON- already in place, I went with what to me seemed like the only sensible answer: CONGERS! (i.e. eels). Jellied eel ... is a thing. A thing that traditionally accompanies pie & mash. It's all very British. I blame Dickens (whom I'm currently reading ... though I don't think there are any eel pies in David Copperfield—not yet, anyway; I've got a few pages left, so there's still hope!)

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. OK, I'm still stuck on dick, I mean DIC ("dish"). It's the subsequent "I" that really gives the "C" its "sh" sound, so ... DIC really seems incomplete. "Tea" is a word for "gossip"—would've been easy to bury "inside" another answer in disguised form ("TI"? "TEE"?), and wouldn't have had that awkward, DIC-ish quality that DIC has. 

P.P.S. The [Windy part of a kite?] is the REEL because it's the part that ... winds (rhymes with "binds"). It's "windy" as in winding, not "windy" as in blowing.

P.P.P.S. [Little lifter] is TEE because a (golf) TEE is little and lifts your ball above ground level.

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Danish shoe designer Jacobsen / SUN 10-8-23 / TV patriarch Stark / Connectors in K'Nex / Ancient inhabitants of modern-day Tabasco / Film enthusiast's creative interpretation / Game in which one player tries to glean information from the other players without being caught

Constructor: Sid Sivakumar

Relative difficulty: Medium 

THEME: "Tones of Voice" — Theme answers are all two-word phrases where the first words sound like a color + a letter. The answers are clued regularly, but also "exemplified" by other answers that contain a COLORFUL CHARACTER (98A: Interesting person ... or what's included, phonetically, five times in this puzzle), i.e. a square containing both the color and the letter suggested by the first words. So...

Theme answers:

• GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY (25A: Special moment exemplified by 24-Across) => word containing a "gold N" that means "opportunity" => CHANCE (24A: One of three spaces on a Monopoly board)
• RED-EYE FLIGHT (36A: Air travel option exemplified by 34-Across) => word containing a "red I" that means "flight" => AVIATION (34A: The Wright stuff?)
• BROWNIE MIX (58A: Baking aisle purchase exemplified by 56-Across) => word containing a "brown E" that means "mix" => BLEND (56A: This and that)
• GRAVY BOATS (72A: Thanksgiving table sights exemplified by 68-Across) => word containing a "gray V" that means "boat" => VESSELS (68A: Containers)
• PINKY PROMISE (91A: Agreement exemplified by 88-Across) => word containing a "pink E" that means "promise" => PLEDGE (88A: Sister-to-be, say)

Word of the Day: FAN EDIT (117A: Film enthusiast's creative reinterpretation) —

A fan edit is a version of a film modified by a viewer, that removes, reorders, or adds material in order to create a new interpretation of the source material. This includes the removal of scenes or dialogue, replacement of audio and/or visual elements, and adding material from sources such as deleted scenes or even other films. // In their most common form, fan edits resemble the work done by professional editors when creating a director's or extended cut of a film, although fan edits are usually limited by the footage already made available to the public with the official home video release of a film, while professional editors working for a film studio have access to more and higher quality footage and elements. In addition to re-editing films, some fan edits feature basic corrections, such as colors or framing, that maintain or restore consistency within the film, such as the Star Wars fan-restoration Harmy's Despecialized Edition, which aims at restoring the Star Wars Original Trilogy to its original, pre-Special Edition form. Other types of fan edits, such as Cosmogony, Bateman Begins: An American Psycho and Memories Alone, merge footage from various films into an entirely different production. While many fan edits are viewed as reactionary to perceived weaknesses in the original films, one film scholar at the University of Kansas has argued that such edits allow fans to creatively reimagine films instead of merely attempting to fix such works. (wikipedia)

• • •

Oof. Color. OK. Did not really get that until about 1/2 way through my solve on (colorless) software. I was like "well, CHANCE means OPPORTUNITY, but I don't really see how GOLDEN factors in here." Eventually I looked at the puzzle on the NYT puzzle website and there they were: colors. Shrug. Pretty tedious, in the end. Just five of these colored squares, and two are "E"s, and ... yeah, if you really feel the need to make use of non-traditional elements like this, it should seem worth it, i.e. more spectacular than this. In the end it's all kind of programmatic. Yes, your word meaning "opportunity" has a gold "N" in it ... because you made that one letter gold, so what? Like, why is one "I" in AVIATION red and not the other? No reason. Who cares? I think about how great the Pride Flag Sunday puzzle was from earlier this year, what thoughtful and meaningful use of color that one had. And then I look at this puzzle. And ... meh. Also, it's a PINKY SWEAR. In Stand By Me, it's a PINKY SWEAR, and if River Phoenix says it's PINKY SWEAR, it's canonical. The wikipedia entry is for PINKY SWEAR (with PINKY PROMISE appearing as an acceptable variant). I've never heard PINKY PROMISE. I assume people say it, because here it is in the puzzle, but it's a weak version of the real thing, which is snappier and therefore better.

I have no idea how difficult the puzzle was, because I switched solving interfaces midway. The first half I did color blind, so it felt kind of hard (I kept "getting" theme answers and not understanding fully what they meant). Then I moved to the properly colored interface, just so I could have a completed color grid to post here, and ... I don't know, maybe things got a little easier. The non-theme stuff wasn't too tough, except for somewhere about 2/3 of the way down the grid, when I had real trouble dropping answers into the bottom third. That SPYFALL (???) RAU (???) BOOK LIST (????) triad, yikes, couldn't get any of them. Absolutely never heard of SPYFALL (wasn't that a Bond film? ... no, wait, that's SKYFALL) (86D: Game in which one player tries to glean information from the other players without being caught); probably seen this RAU person before but forgot them (92D: Author Santha Rama ___); and I don't really get BOOK LIST in this context (82D: Librarian's offering). Do you mean, like, book recommendations? What is the list for? Librarians might "offer" you any number of "lists" depending on your needs. I tried to make BOOK RECS work. No dice. Also found APPLEPAY very very hard (despite using it regularly) (84D: iPhone charger?), which made descending into the bottom part of grid hard on the east side as well. APPLEPAY / "YO, DUDE!" / FAN EDIT may be the toughest mash-up of the grid, though I didn't find the latter two terms all that tough. All three of those answers are just recentish and / or slangy, so I can see them possibly causing some solvers problems. But beyond that, I don't see many real problem spots in this grid. If you solved on your phone or the website, and could see the colored squares from the outset, this one might even skew easy. 

The fill gets real weak up top in that CAEN-CORP-singular-GALOSH section, and no one ever wants to see ST. LEO again, but overall things felt pretty smooth, and "OH GOD, YES!" gave the grid some much-needed life. No idea what a REDOX is (you can read about it here—my eyes glazed over after the first sentence) (36D: Certain chemical reaction), but I do know that RETILE and REROLL are pushing my RE-tolerance. A little. It will surprise no one that I'd never heard of the shoe designer either. The puzzle was desperate for people named ILSE, I guess. How desperate? Well, here's the ILSE line-up from the entire Shortz Era—three ILSEs, all of them different:

[xwordinfo]

In Pre-Shortz Times, there was [Pianist von Alpenheim] and then dozens of ILSEs just clued as [German girl's name] or [Fraulein's name]. Oooh, back in 1948 there was [___ Marvenga, stage and screen actor]. She starred on Broadway in something called "Naughty Marietta"

Ooh, look, ILSE Marvenga paper dolls!

Where was I? Oh right, shoe designer ILSE. Uh, sure. If you say so. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. thanks to everyone who helped push my friend Rachel over (way over) here initial fundraising goal for her Out of the Darkness charity walk for suicide prevention. Very generous of you.

P.P.S. I recently said I liked getting postcards and that I would post them if you sent them and I got two this week, one wishing me a happy wedding anniversary and the other offering a movie recommendation. 

[Van Gogh, “First Steps”]

[Michael Knutson, “Vertical Contracting Brackets”]
[Pretty sure the artist is the postcard sender himself!]

I have a little reader postcard collection going, so feel free to add to it any time you like! (my address is in the sidebar on the website, as always)

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Small fox with unusually large ears / SUN 5-14-23 / Miniature cheese wheel brand / Electrical wiring nexus / Potential scenario in which a piece of software might be helpful / Cocktails named after motorcycle attachments / Holding areas in Capture the Flag / Potential scenario in which a piece of software might be helpful / Conflict over seceding from the Galactic Republic in sci-fi

Constructor: Sid Sivakumar

Relative difficulty: Medium? 

THEME: "Alternate Endings" — visual representations of ZIPPER / MERGES (114A: With 116-Across, procedures in which drivers take turns joining a single stream, as demonstrated five times in this puzzle); so ... two Down answers end up "merging" into a single answer following those little yellow merge signs; the new "merged" answers alternates the remaining letters in the two original Downs, creating a new stand-alone answer. So, e.g., the -LAYA (missing from JAMBA-) and the -EPER (missing from TIMEK-) "merge like a zipper" to create LEAPYEAR (L from LAYA, E from EPER, A from LAYA, P from EPER, etc.). The theme answers are all, thus, figurative LANES (34A: Divisions represented by the highlighted answers in this puzzle):

Theme answers:

• JAMBA-LAYA (15D: Meat-and-vegetables dish with Creole and Cajun varieties) + TIMEKE-EPER (1D: Person with a stopwatch) => LEAP YEAR (47D: Many a presidential election occurs in one)
• "HOW CAN T-HAT BE?" (7D: "Is it even possible?!") + SILVER M-EDAL (8D: It'll take a second to get it) => HEAD TABLE (58D: Where newlyweds are typically seated a at wedding reception)
• RED LAN-TERN (14D: Chinese New Year decoration) + SWITC-HBOX (21D: Electrical wiring nexus) => THE BRONX (53D: Where hip-hop originated)
• IDEA-L GAS (55D: Theoretical substance for which a chemistry law is named) + ROTISS-ERIE (42D: Revolutionary cooking device?) => LEG RAISE (87D: Exercise that strengthens hip flexors)
• STYLIN-G GEL (46D: Hair salon goo) + DAYC-ARES (62D: Toddler drop-off locales) => GAG REELS (89D: Compilations of laughably bad takes)

Word of the Day: BABYBEL (12D: Miniature cheese wheel brand) —

Mini Babybel (/ˈbæbɪbɛl/) is a brand of small snack cheese products that are individually packaged and available in various flavours. It is a product of Le Groupe Bel (French for 'The Bel Group'), a company with roots in the Jura region of France, started by Jules Bel in 1865. Half of the global production of Mini Babybel is made in Évron, a commune in the northwest of France.

In the United States Le Groupe Bel produces the Mini Babybel cheeses in Kentucky. In March 2016, Bel Brands USA opened a new plant in Brookings, South Dakota. At the time, Bel Brands projected that its 250 employees would produce 1.5 million Mini Babybel cheese wheels a day. In July 2018, Le Groupe Bel announced that the company had 12,700 employees in 30 subsidiaries around the world and that their first Canadian office would be in Quebec. (wikipedia)

• • •

Please clap. The puzzle desperately wants you to clap for the architectural gimmick. There is no theme here. There's a visual gimmick. Content means nothing. Answers are just driven into other answers ... because. Also, I still don't know what these "highlighted answers" are that the clue on LANES is referring to (34A: Divisions represented by the highlighted answers in this puzzle). The online version (see grid, above) doesn't have any "highlighted answers"; I'm looking at the newspaper version, and nothing seems to be highlighted, so I'm at a loss. Does "highlighted" simply mean "indicated by the little yellow merge signs"? I dunno. [Aha! For some reason I got a different clue for LANES, why!!? ... anyway, the "correct" clue is [Divisions represented by the answers to starred clues in this puzzle] —OMG you guys got *starred clues*!? LOL, what was that like?] I'm sure this is an architectural marvel, I can see the structural complexity, but it was tedious to solve. It was especially tedious for me to solve because I thought I could power through with my usual software, which did not show me the merge signs because it cannot handle these added-feature-type puzzles. And I did power through. But without the little mergey signs, I could not see where the missing parts of those Down answers had gone to. I feel bad, because it seems obvious in retrospect, but nope. I filled the puzzle completely, correctly, but couldn't see the zipper merge at all. Oh well. Anyway ... that's all. I don't have anything else to say about this theme. You don't see ZIPPER / MERGES much in the States. Or I don't. They really are the way to go. Very common in NZ, where my wife is from and where we visit occasionally. Takes all the erratic driving behavior out of the merging equation. Much saner, much less stressful. I am enjoying thinking about actual ZIPPER / MERGES more than I am thinking about what it was like to solve this puzzle. When I prefer thinking about traffic to thinking about the puzzle, well ... I don't like thinking about traffic in the first place, so there you go.

The fill on this one was occasionally odd. OOZESIN, definitely odd. I'm parsing it OOZE SIN now, and liking it much better that way. SALTPIT was a shrug (92D: Mineral collection site), as were a Lot of the names (AIMEE, LILA, MEIR, etc.). Never heard of USECASE (3D: Potential scenario in which a piece of software might be helpful). I've bought plenty of things on eBay but BID PRICE (48D: Prospective eBay buyer's figure) ... is that just ... the winning bid? And we're doing CLONE WAR ... singular? Huh. The puzzle seemed to be reaching a lot of the time. Before I looked at the online/newspaper grid, i.e. before I knew there were little yellow merge signs involved at all, I sincerely thought BABYBEL was one of the themers. "BABYBEL ... what?," I thought. No idea what that is. None, zero. I know "BABY BELuga," but whatever this cheese brand is, nope. The larger blocks of answers are kinda nice, from a themeless angle. That center block is especially impressive given that it's got a theme answer running right through it. I also like the image of SKYWALKER on AUTOPILOT up in the sky there (i.e. the top of the grid). And it's true, THE BRONX is NOT SO BAD. So in bits and pieces, here and there, there are things to admire. And again, as stunt grids go, this one is pretty fancy. I just can't say that merging answers like zippers is very zippy. It just ... is. There it is. Hope you liked it more than I did.

What needs explaining? Probably the rules to Capture the Flag, which I haven't played ... in maybe 40+ years, and even then maybe only played once. JAILS, you say? (15A: Holding areas in Capture the Flag). OK. I had GUMBO at first where JUMBA(-LAYA) was supposed to go, so that section was a mess early on. Fun fact, BEARCAT (41A: University of Cincinnati athlete) is a Binghamton University athlete too. I still don't know what a BEARCAT is. Fictional, maybe? No, it looks like what gets called BEARCAT is actually a binturong. But ... I mean ... OK, they may be real, but I think sports teams have definitely fictionalized their energy and ferocity level. I mean, compare:

Totally forgot a FENNEC was a thing (40A: Small fox with unusually large ears). Why are there no schools with the FENNEC as their mascot? The Fordham FENNECs! They should consider it. I don't know what they are now, but FENNECs has a ring. The MARY repeated in a nursery rhyme is (I assume) MARY, MARY, Quite Contrary, whose garden grows ... some kind of way, I forget. Fred ARMISEN (103A: Fred who co-created "Portlandia") has a cameo appearance in the latest episode of "Barry" as a very bad assassin. Always happy to see him, wherever and whenever, even if I am never going to be entirely sure what the last vowel in his name is.

[Warning: Violent content]

Happy Mother's Day to all relevant parties! We're heading over to the Hudson Valley today to see our daughter, who is taking time off from scoping out NYC (in preparation for an impending move) so we can have lunch with her in Beacon. See you tomorrow, or next week, or whenever. Take care.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Metaphor for one's personal perspective / SAT 4-8-23 / 2019 chart-topper for Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello / Source of masago in Japanese cuisine / Consumer of cod but not cow / Game that's hard to follow / Rock band named after its founding guitarist

Constructor: Sid Sivakumar

Relative difficulty: Challenging

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Masago (6A: Source of masago, in Japanese cuisine => SMELT) —

Masago is the roe of capelin, a fish in the smelt family. It’s a popular ingredient in Japanese cuisine because of its distinct look and taste. Masago eggs are very small, and often used as a topping in a variety of sushi recipes. (izzycooking.com)

• • •

A central element of this puzzle's difficulty for me came from an answer that was very easy to get: namely, PESCETARIAN. That word is pronounced with a hard "C," and since "C"s are never* hard if they precede an "E" I always assumed that word was spelled PESCATARIAN. Which it is. Sometimes. I see now that PESCETARIAN is supposed to be a variation on VEGETARIAN, hence (I assume) the "E" spelling, but knowing too much about how the English language actually works completely blinded me to the idea that PESCETARIAN might be right. It still looks horrible to me. PESCETARIAN. What is that? "Someone who eats only what Joe Pesci eats"? Anyway, I'm going to continue to spell it the correct way, the way that my software (currently) is *not* red-underlining: PESCATARIAN. The problem with my "misspelling" today is that it led to BARBECUES at 25A: Some tailgate party accessories (BEER BONGS). I think of tailgate parties and BEER BONGS as belonging to completely different cultures, or at least different locales (stadium parking lots vs. frat houses / dorms), so the BONGS part was a long time coming. I am "drawn" to NYC for art exhibits, and to wander art museums, but it would not occur to me to come for something as vague as ART SCENES (27A: Cultural draws for New York and Los Angeles). Again, the clue just didn't track for me. See also STIR (?) instead of the obviously better answer SNIT at 14D: Tizzy. I know "three-card MONTE" but not (really) MONTE on its own, so that was brutal.  SHOES is clued accurately enough (16D: Metaphor for one's personal perspective), but dear lord it's hard to imagine without a possessive pronoun ("your" "my") in front of it. Somehow all these troublesome clues ended up in the NE, but I still blame PESCETARIAN for starting the trouble. The west half of the puzzle played normal, but the east half played very hard, and the epicenter of that hardness was PESCETARIAN's second "E."

I had a bunch of half answers today. Had SOLAR but thought SOLAR YEAR (30A: Astronomer's calculation). Is that a thing? Had BEAMS at 6D: Supporting elements in a story?) and kept imagining an attic, not a highrise, and so STEEL never occurred to me. Had ONE long before I finally figured out the TO WATCH part (40A: A promising talent). Eventually had STEP but the only phrases knocking around my brain were "walk in (lock) step" or "march in time" so that one was elusive as well. The SE threatened to be a total washout. Thank god for SWOLE (he said, for the first time in his life) (38D: Ripped, in slang). That, and TESSA, and then ALPHAS, helped me corral an otherwise brutal corner. No idea about the 2019 "chart-topper," LOL, shrug. #1 songs just don't have the cultural reach they used to. (Also, despite being a huge fan of all kinds of contemporary music, the "charts"? Not interested). No way of getting to PILFERS from 46A: Lifts (even with the PIL- in place, no idea; I wanted PILLARS). Big leap from [Followers] to SHEEP, I think, but the puzzle does not think so. Lots of people "follow" this blog; I have a hard time seeing them as particularly ovine. 

Explainers:

• COAL MINER (22A: One picking out something for a cart, maybe) — miners use "picks" to get ... ore? ... and put it in their ore carts; I think that's the idea.
• TENORS (13A: General senses) — this would've been far easier to get in the singular.
• TSA (26A: They have bags under their eyes) — one of the better trick clues.
• PILFERS (46A: Lifts) — "Lifts" as in "steals."
• AVONLEA (2D: "Anne of Green Gables" setting) — never read it, but this answer was one of the few gimmes (thank you, crosswords!).
• LOSINGS (9D: Money that goes to a casino)— from the gambler's perspective ... OK, sure.
• POND SCUM (28D: Dirty film) — definitely had "PORN" sitting in the first position here for a bit.

Have a nice rest of your day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

*probably not “never” but close

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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