Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle: Suzanne Oliver

Constructor: Suzanne Oliver

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (for a Monday, solved Downs-only)

THEME: SHORT CHANGE (59A: Cheat ... or a punny hint to the four sets of circled letters) — circled letters spell out various U.S. coins ("change") lacking their last letters ("short"):

Theme answers:

JAZZ QUARTET (17A: Saxophone, trumpet, piano and bass, perhaps)
JEDI MASTERS (25A: Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobi, for two)
OPEN NOTES (35A: Some exams allow them)
PERSNICKETY (52A: Overly fussy)

Word of the Day: MOZILLA (3D: Creator of Firefox and Thunderbird) —

Mozilla is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, publishes, and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting free software and open standards. The community is supported institutionally by the non-profit Mozilla Foundation and its tax-paying subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation.
Mozilla's current products include the Firefox web browser, Thunderbird e-mail client (now through a subsidiary), the Bugzilla bug tracking system, and the Gecko layout engine. (wikipedia)

• • •

Phew. I knew this was going to be a tough Downs-only solve because of all the 7-letter Downs. Four banks of three 7-letter Downs. That's twelve 7-letter Downs. That's a lot of 7-letter Downs. Way more than you typically see on a Monday. If you're solving Downs-only, you (I) really rely on short stuff to get traction, and those corners just make traction hard to come by. Generally, the longer the answer gets, the less likely it is that you'll be able to get it with no crosses in place. So those corners felt like minefields. But I managed to maneuver my way through them by getting some of the 7s at first guess, and then relying on inferred Acrosses to help me bring down the others. My proudest moment was throwing down CAJOLES with absolutely no help from crosses (1D: Persuades with flattery). First answer I thought of. I liked where it put the "J" (at the beginning of a long themer, where a "J" would be apt to appear), so I kept it there, and woo hoo, it panned out. Couldn't come up with MOZILLA at first, but got it once I was able to infer the JAZZ part of JAZZ QUARTET, which gave me the "Z" I needed to jog MOZILLA loose from my memory bank (3D: Creator of Firefox and Thunderbird). And that's how the corners went, largely—I'd be pretty sure of two of the 7-letter Downs and then hack my way through the crosses to get the third. Couldn't see GLOSSES right away (13D: Shiny coatings). Had AROUSES (?!) before AWAKENS (I think I probably wanted ROUSES and then just ... improvised). Wanted POP FOUL in the SW, but wasn't as sure of that as I was of the others down there. It's possible that this puzzle felt scarier (from a Downs-only perspective) than it ended up being. I did finish with an error—a pretty dumb one. I was staring at -E-TLY for 49D: With a light touch, and the word I came up with was DEFTLY (which gave me DAS and AFI for crosses). AFI did feel pretty unMondayish, but it's an abbr. I've seen (short for American Film Institute), so I went for it. My last answer. When I didn't get the "Congratulations" message, I went "bah!," pulled the "D" and "F" from DEFTLY and went back to thinking. Some number of seconds later, GENTLY went in, and that was that.

I don't love the idea of circled squares that contain, essentially, gibberish, but it's a meaningful gibberish, in the end. Non-gibberish cut short. So it's not so irksome. And it really helped me today. That is, knowing the theme did. I know I botched the GENTLY, but I wouldn't have been able to make anything out of it if I hadn't realized that those circled squares had to spell out "NICKE(L)." That realization got me to change CARAT to KARAT (which I always confuse) (53D: Gold standard) and got me that "E" in what turned out to be GENTLY. It also got me PERSNICKETY, which really opened up the SW. I found the crosses of PERSNICKETY the hardest of the themer crosses. We've covered GENTLY. There was also ENDS AT, which was tough for me to parse given the phrasing of the clue (48D: Is over by). I thought [Is over by] meant "is situated near." "Where's my scarf?" "It's over by the door." Sigh. Further, TOOTSY ... yeesh, that feels like a variant. I had it in place based on the first two letters, but I never trusted it until all the crosses ended up checking out. I thought the spelling was TOOTSIE, but it's possible I'm overly influenced by the ending of BOOTIE (which goes on a baby's foot). Or by "Tootsie Rolls." Or possibly the movie TOOTSIE.

I think the theme is cute and I actually used the theme to help me with my solve, which doesn't often happen with early puzzles ... unless you solve Downs-only, since you frequently need all the help you can get. I liked that the theme answers themselves were strong today. Not just appropriate for the theme, but solid, hearty answers in their own right (I know, I'm sick of all the Star Wars stuff too, but "DIM" breaks perfectly across JEDI and MASTERS and I'm more forgiving of Star Wars-ness when it's a result of theme constraint). Not often you get an answer as smooth and Scrabbly as JAZZ QUARTET on a Monday, or any day. Smooth jazz! Since I didn't know the theme up front, I actually didn't know if it was going to be a QUARTET or a QUINTET until I got the crosses, one of which, CIRRI (7D: Wispy clouds), did not come to me immediately. AWARDS was somewhat easier (6D: Oscars and Grammys, e.g.), and that forced "quart" over "quint." Not knowing the theme early meant that I had no idea what those circled squares were up to. QUARTE is nonsense, but DIM isn't, and neither is PENN ... which made me think maybe QUARTE was wrong, somehow. The revealer would eventually make sense of it all. Overall, the theme is decent, the theme answers are strong regardless of thematic content, and the open corners give the grid more sizzle than most early-week puzzles tend to have. MOZILLA is blah (to me—proper nouns from tech and other corporations are always gonna be blah to me), but the rest of those 7-letter Downs really hold up.

[JAZZ QUINTETs are real!]

Bullets:

39A: Cops, slangily (POPO) — I like slang, but somehow I'm embarrassed for the puzzle every time it uses this term. I don't like any slang that makes grown-ass adults sound like babies.
66A: Kind of lamp that's energy efficient ( L.E.D.) — I will never, ever understand opting for an abbr. clue like this when the answer is actually a perfectly good, real, unabbreviated word. Light-emitting diode. That's what L.E.D. stands for. I had to look it up. It's not that I hadn't heard of L.E.D. lights before. It's just zzzzzzzzz from a cluing standpoint.
11D: Don't blow it! (BIG LEAD) — I don't know what they call these "it" + exclamation point clues, where "it"-containing phrases are asking you to come up with a specific "it" as the answer. You know, [Step on it!] for STAIR, say, or [Hit it!] for GONG or [Dig it!] for ORE or whatever. Seven letters is kind of long as an answer for one of these clues. These types of clues are funnier when the answer takes you someplace that has nothing to do with the clue phrase—[Cut it out!] for COUPON, for example. Today's answer doesn't really take you anywhere surprising (i.e. the answer doesn't alter the meaning of "blow" as it appears in the clue), but I still liked the idea. I was pretty proud when I got this off of just the "E" and "D." In cryptic crosswords, clues ending in "!" are called "and lit" (stylized "&lit.") clues:

What, then, is this mythical beast? “&lit.” is short for “and literally.” What that means in the context of cryptics is that unlike all other clues, which can be broken into a straight definition portion and a wordplay portion, &lit. clues can be read in their entirety as both at the same time. Often, but not always, an exclamation point at the end of the clue is placed to indicate its &lit.-ness. (Stella Zawistowski, "Decrypting the Cryptic")

That's enough puzzle for today. Let's move on now to 🌲🐈Holiday Pet Pics🐕🌲!

Here's Foxglove the cat, looking at new family member Willow the dog like, "hmm, yes, adorable, I'm sure, just make sure she doesn't come anywhere near my Christmas tree spot."

[Look at this good dog! She means well, Foxglove!]
[Thanks, Anthony]

Henry and Lily return to the blog for maybe the third time. They do not miss a chance to participate in Christmas fun. They got outfits and everything. "Where do you want us?" They offered several poses. Eventually, Carol had to say "We're good, guys, I think we got enough options. Shoot's over. No, I'm not getting you an Instagram account. We talked about screen time, remember?" "But we could be Dogfluencers! Christmas dogfluencers! Come on!"

[Thanks, Carol!]

Here are two Siberian Forest Cats, which are apparently a thing! Liam has recreated the mountainous environment of their ancestors in his home. Chester looks like he's king of the mountain, but everyone knows the real king gets the comfy bed and good luck dethroning Felix. Come at the king, you best not miss, Chester.

[Thanks, Liam]

I laughed out loud at this next one. Salix looks not so much like she is hiding as she looks like she's lost. Or stuck. We'll get you out, Salix, don't worry!

[Thanks, Anne!]

Barrel will allow you to place exactly one more plush toy around him before things get violent. One. Just one.

[Thanks, Janet!]

Lastly, Mac, who decorated the tree all by himself this year. Look how proud he is!

[Thanks, Chip!]

That's it. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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