French skin-care and cosmetics giant / SUN 2-6-22 / Score of 8 in golf slang / Social media star Addison / The better of two sci-fi film franchises / Family name on TV's succession / The volcano Emi Koussi is its highest point / Skin-care brand with an accent over its last letter

Constructor: Stephen McCarthy

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: Sci-fi Showdown: theme pivots on an apparent single answer to a question: 70A: The better of two major sci-fi film franchises, but it's a Schrödinger's Puzzle where both "STAR WARS" and "STAR TREK" work with the crosses; also there is random symmetrical "SW" and "ST" content, sigh: 

Theme answers:

• "DO OR DO NOT, THERE IS NO TRY" 3D: Memorable quote from 70-Across)
• "SPACE: THE FINAL FRONTIER" (17D: Memorable quote from 70-Across)
• REBEL ALLIANCE (25A: Good side in 70-Across)
• THE FEDERATION (115A: Good side in 70-Across)
• HAN SOLO (38A: Major role in 70-Across)
• MR. SPOCK (99A: Major role in 70-Across)

Word of the Day: MASERS (98D: Devices in atomic clocks) —

A maser (/ˈmeɪzər/, an acronym for microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation) is a device that produces coherent electromagnetic waves through amplification by stimulated emission. The first maser was built by Charles H. Townes, James P. Gordon, and Herbert J. Zeiger at Columbia University in 1953. Townes, Nikolay Basov and Alexander Prokhorov were awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics for theoretical work leading to the maser. Masers are used as the timekeeping device in atomic clocks, and as extremely low-noise microwave amplifiers in radio telescopes and deep space spacecraft communication ground stations. (wikipedia)

• • •

So it's just a boring variation on the famous CLINTON / BOBDOLE puzzle of November 1996? Huh. OK. I guess that famous puzzle was a whole-ass generation ago, and sci-fi franchise nerds rule the universe now, so sure, make a version for them, go off. But I've never figured out a theme, and gotten bored of a theme, so fast. I mean *fast*. How fast? This fast:

And it took this long only because I didn't even bother to actually look at what 70-Across was before going up and getting REBEL ALLIANCE. As soon as I saw the revealer clue, with its apparently trolling question, I knew it was a Schrödinger. TREK fits. WARS fits. And sure enough, as soon as I tested the first Schrödinger letter (the "T" / "W"), both letters worked, and the whole puzzle was ... well, done, as far as any level of thematic interest was concerned. The rest of the puzzle is decorative, with "these just happen to be symmetrical" names / phrases populating the grid here and there. I think my favorite part of the grid was "It's a TRAP" (the "T" option in the TREK / WARS showdown), because it's a very famous line from ... "STAR WARS" (well, "Return of the Jedi," but close enough): 

I am also enjoying imagining that "STAR TREK" had a character named MRS. POCK. Beyond that, not a lot to love. I'm tired of the way franchises / sequels / children's fare dominates the box office, and I'm ... well, I'm not *tired* of Schrödinger puzzles, exactly; it's just that the bar is so high. Baiting nerds into a flame war ... doesn't seem like a worthy motivation for a Schrödinger. Also, this one was just far, far too easy to sniff out.

The skin-care answers today, yipes and yikes. I am waiting for my wife to solve the puzzle, because I don't think she'll know either of them, either, but we'll see. I can tell you that both are debuts, and it seems to me that if either were so sure-fire great, we'd've seen them by now. NARS in particular is just brutally ugly, as fill, as a word ... woof (36D: French skin-care and cosmetics giant). BIORÉ at least I've heard of (92A: Skin-care brand with an accent over its last letter). It rings a very faint bell, where NARS rings nothing. It sounds like a euphemism for where you kick a guy if you want to really hurt him. "Oof, right in the NARS!" Weird to go to the skin-care well twice like this, with both answers being absolutely new to the grid. Brands and movie franchises! And golf slang! (50A: Score of 8, in golf slang = SNOWMAN). Quite a day for "things I try not to think about." 

["DON'T BE SAD ..."]

Not much in the way of difficulty today. Some names that meant nothing to me (a "social media star" (:/), a "Gossip Girl" actor), but the crosses were so easy I barely noticed them. I am doomed never to remember what MASERS are, but luckily crosses bailed me out there as well. I had TRUISM (?) before THEISM (59A: Capital-B Belief) and CORER before PARER (4D: Apple device), and I needed some crosses to get ANDERS (32A: Celsius of the Celsius scale), but otherwise I just flew through this. I would've said you SHIMMY up a pole, but that's apparently a famous mistake (72A: Climb (up) = SHINNY). Or perhaps no longer a mistake, but an accepted conflation. Here's University of Michigan English Professor Anne Curzan (with whom I went to grad school) explaining the curious history of the "shimmy" / "shinny" confusion. The other thing that baffled me was the LOCUS clue (31A: Points all around?). I think of LOCUS as one point, but it seems that in math it can mean all the points "satisfying a particular equation of the relation between coordinates"—so a parabola, for instance, can be a LOCUS. Pffft. Ok. Shrug. If I am still misunderstanding this clue, please don't bother to fill me in, as I no longer care. Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Miami five / THU 12-23-21 / Old-timey agreements / Morgan Stanley acquisition of 2020 / Heath genus that's also a woman's name / Certain international soccer championship familiarly / Free-fall phenomenon informally

Constructor: Stephen McCarthy

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: A.O. Swap — familiar phrases where the second word is changed into a different word by having the "O" and "A" swap places. Destination: Wacky Town!

Theme answers:

• "A CHRISTMAS CORAL" (17A: Reef deposit hung on the holiday tree?)
• VITAL ARGON (31A: Noble gas you can't live without?)
• CAFFE MACHO (41A: Starbucks order for a man's man)
• TAKES TWO TO TONGA (59A: Buys tickets for a couple of friends for a Polynesian getaway?)

Word of the Day: ASHEville (3D: Lead-in to a Southern "-ville") —

Asheville (/ˈæʃvɪl/ ASH-vil) is a city in, and the county seat of, Buncombe County, North Carolina, United States. Located at the confluence of the French Broad and Swannanoa rivers, it is the largest city in Western North Carolina, and the state's 12th-most populous city. According to the 2020 United States Census, the city's population was 94,589, up from 83,393 in the 2010 census. It is the principal city in the four-county Asheville metropolitan area, which had a population of 424,858 in 2010, and of 469,015 in 2020. (wikipedia)

[source: NPR]

• • •

This seemed way too untricky for a Thursday, so naturally I was suspicious. I finished it up assuming that the theme was just anagrams ... of the second word in a phrase. I didn't get it. Didn't seem like enough of a gimmick to meet Thursday Gimmick standards. So I stared at the "anagrams" a little harder, like some dope staring at one of those Magic Eye posters in the '90s, trying to see something they can't see but that they're sure must be there, and that's when I noticed that the "anagrams" are not merely letter jumbles: the only letters that move are the "A" and the "O"—they simply switch places. So it's an elegant little anagram, but ... honestly, it just reads as an anagram. If there is some element to this theme that I'm missing, at this point, I'm gonna say that's the puzzle's fault. I don't think most solvers are even going to notice the narrow terms of the anagram. They're just gonna think, "oh cool, I was able to finish the Thursday without much hassle, nice!" or "is that it?" The wackiness definitely gets better as the puzzle goes on (that is, as you descend the grid), but a half-wacky letter-swap puzzle somehow still doesn't feel like it's reaching Thursday heights of lunacy. This was clued like a Thursday (i.e. toughish), but the puzzle definitely felt more like a Wednesday (just as Wednesday's felt more like Tuesday). So I'm left feeling kind of BLAH about this one. 

I'm very much in favor of HERDS CATS as an answer and D.C. STATEHOOD as a matter of national politics, so the long Downs today are doing their jobs nicely, from my perspective. I'm less fond of RIAA, the letters of which I can never remember ... Recording Industry of America ... something? Hang on ... Recording Industry Association of America, there we go. It's primarily an excuse to get three consecutive vowels into the grid. I trip over it every time I see it in crosswords, though today I actually didn't trip at all (except in trying to remember what its letters mean). And then alongside RIAA we had this unwelcome guest Yet Again:

Truly the lowest form of kealoa*. I thought "Well, the puzzle had ITTY the other day for the stand-alone word, so ITSY probably only gets clued with "bitsy," so ... since this one is stand-alone, let's go with ITTY!" So of course the answer was ITSY. You see how stupid this is. You know it's one of two things but even with *three-fourths* of the letters in place you can't call it. This may seem like an ITSY thing but I just want you to see why these baby-talk word variants are much much worse than most other throwaway short fill. Throw me a bone with "___-bitty" or "___-bitsy" so I can just get it and move on, or else don't use it. No pleasure is being gained here. All you can do is diminish the pain.

Lots of old (old) friends in this one, including John RAE, James ENSOR, ENOS and the ARCO station. Really paid to have lots of olde-time solving experience under your belt. Still haven't mastered the ASTON / ASTIN distinction, so I had a minor error there (John ASTIN = actor, ASTON Martin = car, ASHTON = actor in "Dude, Where's My Car?"—you're welcome). Best error of the day was when I wrote in GLARE for 47A: Cause of the moon hitting your eye like a big pizza pie, in song (AMORE). Brain "hmmm, something about light hitting your eyes ... ends in -RE ... must be GLARE. Next!" AYS is bad, mainly because it could've just been ACS (as in "air conditioners"). Instead, we get this plural (?) non-word ... how is it "ay" and not "aye" if it's an agreement??? Put your dictionaries away, please, you know this is awful. Also, is this "old-timey" or just Scottish. Looks like in Scots, spelling convention is usually "aye" for "always, ever" and "ay" for "yes," but not always, and anyway you can see how it would be confusing, what with "aye" obviously meaning "yes" in most crossword contexts. And if the assent is AY then why isn't it AY-AY, captain! So dumb. Anyway, all of this madness is obviated by the simple switch to ACS, which is both straightforward and non-old-timey. Especially in the plural. More than one AC unit, makes sense. More than one old-timey assent ... less plausible.

Happy run-up to Christmas, whatever that means to you. See you tomorrow. And hey, if you don't already have a New Yorker subscription, you might want to seek out the Dec. 27 issue (out this week). It's a puzzle-themed issue, with lots of wonderfully inventive content. Also, it contains a reference to yours truly, so there's that. Bye!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

*kealoa = short, common fill that you can't just fill in quickly because two or more answers are viable Even With One or More Letters In Place. From the classic [Mauna ___] KEA/LOA conundrum. See also, e.g. [Heaps] ATON/ALOT, ["Git!"] "SHOO"/"SCAT," etc.

P.S. the [Miami five] are THE HEAT because they're a basketball team

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Fourth person to walk on the moon / SUN 8-22-21 / Toni Morrison title heroine / Member of a noble family / You might be marveling at this as it whizzes by / My Two 2015 Claudia Harrington children's book / 1980s gaming inits / Pioneering gangsta rap group / Girl in the Old Curiosity Shop / Group trying to sack a QB

Constructor: Stephen McCarthy

Relative difficulty: Medium (?)

THEME: "Resettling Letterings" — Clues contain anagrams of answers:

Theme answers:

• "MEAN GIRLS" (23A: 2004 film about a group of MALIGNERS)
• GREASE PAINT (25A: It might be put on for stage PAGEANTRIES)
• MAGLEV TRAIN (42A: You might be MARVELING AT this as it whizzes by)
• CATECHISM (46A: Sort of SCHEMATIC for Christian education)
• DATING SITE (64A: Many relationships are INSTIGATED on one)
• WHITE BREAD (68A: Healthy eaters may give this a WIDE BERTH)
• LIONESSES (90A: They can be NOISELESS while stalking prey)
• ADVENTURERS (93A: Explorers of the UNTRAVERSED)
• CALLIGRAPHY (111A: Writing done GRAPHICALLY)
• GIFT HORSE (115A: The Trojans lacked the FORESIGHT to turn this down)

Word of the Day: MAGLEV TRAIN (42A) —

Maglev (from magnetic levitation) is a system of train transportation that uses two sets of magnets: one set to repel and push the train up off the track, and another set to move the elevated train ahead, taking advantage of the lack of friction. Along certain "medium-range" routes (usually 320 to 640 km [200 to 400 mi]), maglev can compete favourably with high-speed rail and airplanes. (wikipedia)

• • •

Legitimately stunned at how remedial this theme is. I keep thinking I must be missing something, because this seems like a theme you might have seen some variation of a thousand times, 30 years ago, in outlets far less prestigious than the NYT. It's anagrams. That's it. It's ... it's anagrams. There is nothing here. There's nothing clever. There's no joy. There is some measure of difficulty, I guess, as you have to sit there moving letters around in your mind for a bit, but ... it's a kid's placemat of a puzzle, ultimately. Mind-blowing that the highest-profile puzzle outlet in the country serves up *this* as its marquee puzzle of the week. I wish I had more to say. It's anagrams. It's anagrams. Eight anagrams. It's got MIZZENS, I guess that was weird enough to be noteworthy. And MAGLEV TRAIN, which ... I don't even know what that is, to be quite honest, but at least it's unusual. RIGHT ON CUE and BLEARY-EYED are fine longer answers. I can't give any credit to ZOOM BOMB because as someone who taught on Zoom for seemingly ever (actual time: 2.5 semesters), I can't find any pleasure in Zoom anything. But it's not an inherently bad answer. Still ... even if you throw ZOOM BOMB onto the "Good" side of the ledger ... that's not a lot of "Good," especially for a Sunday. There was 3 to 4x as much goodness in the much smaller Saturday grid. Ooh, BANH MI, something else I like ... I'm really trying here. It's just that the theme is dismal. It's hardly there at all. I don't understand how the NYTXW has so few decent Sunday submissions that it has to resort to this. "OLDIES," indeed.

No idea who ALAN BEAN is, so that was by far the toughest part of the grid for me. I guess I know who the [House Republican V.I.P....] is, since she's a rep from my state, but she's such a vile dishonest fascist supporter of disinformation and sedition that I'm not even mentioning any part of her name, you'll notice. Not sure what this crossword editor's fascination is with "both sides" of the political aisle, but he's clearly really committed. 

[NYT, May 14, 2021]

Is the mule carrying a KILO of coke? (79A: Valuable load for a mule). I am guessing (only guessing) that it's gold, but it's not the 19th century, so the clue is a little confusing. What is PAP? Is that like CUD? Soft food, maybe ... I think? Anyway, [You can chew on it] is about as unhelpful a clue for PAP as I can imagine. I had RERIG before REFIT (102D: Make over, as a ship) and "AYE AYE" before "AYE, SIR" (101A: "On it, captain!"), so I was really whiffing on the nautical stuff today (which there was a weird lot of). I've heard the French cry "Mon DIEU!" but "DIEU merci!" I couldn't really place. The rest of this grid ... happened. I'm quite done. Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. if you want to remind yourself what good puzzles look like, go order the puzzles from yesterday's Lollapuzzoola crossword tournament. Just do it. 

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Seasonal destination near Quebec City / SUN 6-13-21 / Alberta city named for an eagle-feather headdress / Space-scanning org. / Berliner pioneer in phonograph records / Conflicts of 1839-42 and 1856-60 / Two-player game invented in Toronto / Classical Icelandic literary work

Constructor: Stephen McCarthy

Relative difficulty: E asyis H

THEME: "Maple Leaf" — black squares are supposed to form a maple leaf pattern; theme answers are all Canadian things in which you can find "EH" in circled squares because ha ha you know how Canadians talk, eh? ... revealer has an "EH" pun in it: MEHD (!?) IN CANADA (76A: Like all the answers with pairs of circled letters, punnily):

Theme answers:

• WINTER ICE HOTEL (16D: Seasonal destination near Quebec City)
• MEDICINE HAT (4D: Alberta city named for an eagle-feather headdress)
• GORDIE HOWE (104A: Six-time winner of the N.H.L.'s Art Ross Trophy, born in Saskatchewan)
• TABLE HOCKEY (10D: Two-player game invented in Toronto)
• FREE HEALTH CARE (19D: Program introduced by the Trudeau government in 1984, colloquially)
• LESLIE HOPE (108A: "24" and "Suits" actress, born in Halifax)

Word of the Day: LESLIE HOPE (108A) —

Leslie Ann Hope (born May 6, 1965) is a Canadian actress and director, best known for her role as Teri Bauer on the Fox television series 24 and prosecutor Anita Gibbs on Suits. [entirety of the clue (except the "born in Halifax" part) taken from the first sentence of her wikipedia page ... nice (i.e. lazy)]

• • •

How in the *world* was
this not a theme answer!?

I feel like we just had a Canada-themed puzzle, but I may just be remembering the insanely esoteric [Canadian ambassador to the U.N.] clue for RAE from a few weeks back. Anyway, what is this? Why is this? It's such a sad day for Canada. This huge, beautiful, diverse country reduced to six totally arbitrary answers and a single cliché linguistic tic. And the maple leaf, I guess. Still, this made me sad. Made me feel bad for our lovely neighbors ("n-EH-bors?") to the north. I went to Montreal for the first time in the summer of '19 and it instantly became my second-favorite city (after Edinburgh, the undisputed eternal No. 1 city of my heart). I miss Montreal every day. I was missing the croissants just this morning. I've been to Vancouver, Toronto ... lovely, lovely. This is all to say that I am more than open to Canadian shenanigans in my crosswourd (that's how you spell it in Canada, right?). But the "EH" thing here is so corny, and it forces the themer set to be semi-ridiculous. Is LESLIE HOPE really 1/6 of your All-Canada theme team? Is WINTER ICE HOTEL really a thing? I've heard of an ice hotel, but only in Iceland (or maybe Norway? Sweden?). And anyway, wherever the ice hotel is located, surely "winter" is redundant. Where exactly is the summer ice hotel? (A: nowhere because it melted). TABLE HOCKEY? LOL if you say so. Why is FREE HEALTH CARE "colloquial"? Sounds pretty straightforward. Is it just that the actual law has some other name and you're just using FREE HEALTH CARE as a stand-in? Because there's nothing slangy about FREE HEALTH CARE. Just a normal phrase. The worst thing about the puzzle isn't just that the revealer pun is corny, it's that it looks so awfully dumb on the page. MEHD IN CANADA? MEHD? .... MEHD? ... Just keep looking at it. Why? No reason. It's not going to magically look good all of a sudden. And you don't say the "EH"s as "eh"s in the themers but you *do* say it that way in the revealer? And the EH's don't even, I don't know, make a shape or form a map or something? No? And yet that candelabra-looking black-square formation is supposed to be a maple leaf? Eh, Not SO HOT.

ARCHFOE is hilariously not a thing. What dark corner of what dark word list did that come from. It's "archenemy" or gtfo. I actually really like the middle of this grid (the part that doesn't involve the revealer, that is). That column of long Downs looks great, and all crossing the flashy QUINCEAÑERA! Sweet. Beyond that, it's PERLENGETEMOBOENS and AIGISLEELMUG and OPELHAHCOONETATRA as far as the eye can see. Well, not that far, but pretty far. Nothing much else to talk about. Don't really get why the clue on MAIN ST. was [Central route thru town] as opposed to [Central rte. through town]. I guess the former is shorter. Anyway, didn't pick up that "thru" was an abbr. signal, so was surprised to get an abbr. in the answer. But there's nothing technically wrong there. As you can see, I have nothing important left to talk about and am resorting to musings on the philosophy of crossword clues, just to fill space. So with that, I say adieu ('cause, you know ... Canada ... with the French and all...)

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. Peter Gordon's Kickstarter for "A-to-Z Crosswords 2021" is wrapping up today. These are daily easy 9x11 puzzles, each of which contains every letter of the alphabet at least once (pangrams!). Here are the specs:

Every day (including weekends) for 13 weeks you’ll get a 9×11 easy-to-medium crossword whose answer contains all 26 letters. They will be written by Peter Gordon and Frank Longo. The puzzles will be delivered to your email inbox in two forms: Across Lite, which can be solved on your computer, smartphone, or tablet; and pdf, which can be printed and solved on paper. All this for less than 11¢ a puzzle.

Would make a nice little addition to your solving routine. Might be great for someone who's just getting into crosswords (or someone you want to encourage to get into crosswords). There are sample puzzles at the Kickstarter site if you're curious. Get in on the action here. Yes, now.

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