Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle: Thomas Byrne

Constructor: Thomas Byrne and Daniel Bodily

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: DOUBLE STUF OREOS (35A: Extra-thick Nabisco treats, hinted at four times in this puzzle) — four DOUBLE STUF OREOS are depicted in the grid; that is, four theme answers have "double" letters that are uncrossed, i.e. they have black squares both above and below them; those black squares represent the cookie part of a Double Stuf Oreo, while the double letters represent the creme; the double letters, read in order, spell STUF (or rather SSTTUUFF, i.e. "double STUF")

Theme answers:

CLASSIC HITS (12A: Popular oldies)
BOTTLES (27A: Beer hall recyclables)
VACUUMS (44A: Empty spaces)
AFTEREFFECT (61A: Consequence)

Word of the Day: Honeydew (60A: Insect that "farms" aphids for their honeydew => ANT) —

Honeydew is a sugar-rich sticky liquid, secreted by aphids, some scale insects, and many other true bugs and some other insects as they feed on plant sap. When their mouthpart penetrates the phloem, the sugary, high-pressure liquid is forced out of the anus of the insects, allowing them to rapidly process the large volume of sap required to extract essential nutrients present at low concentrations. Honeydew is particularly common as a secretion in hemipteran insects and is often the basis for trophobiosis. Some caterpillars of Lycaenidae butterflies and some moths also produce honeydew. In addition to various sugars, honeydew contains small amounts of amino acids, other organic compounds, and inorganic salts with its precise makeup affected by factors such as insect species, host plant species, and whether a symbiotic organism is present.
Honeydew-producing insects, like cicadas, pierce phloem ducts to access the sugar rich sap; the excess fluid released by cicadas as honeydew is called "cicada rain". The sap continues to bleed after the insects have moved on, leaving a white sugar crust called manna. Ants may collect, or "milk", honeydew directly from aphids and other honeydew producers, which benefit from their presence due to their driving away predators such as lady beetles or parasitic wasps—see Crematogaster peringueyi. Animals and plants in a mutually symbiotic arrangement with ants are called Myrmecophiles.

• • •

This one started rough. Just wasn't buying CLASSIC HITS as a thing (felt redundant—they're just CLASSICS), and TOOK A PIC seemed solidly in EAT-A-SANDWICH territory (i.e. Contrivedville), and on top of that I'm supposed to remember Laotian currency (!?) and then I'm condescended to with a sad letter string that couldn't even be bothered to have an original clue (8D: R-V hookup?)? That "RV" wordplay used to be de rigueur for STU clues in the late '90s / early '00s, but hasn't been seen since 2015, so it'll be new to many of you, I guess. Anyway, I was not feeling the puzzle at all. AMORTIZES? There's a word only a banker's mother could love. CHOCOLATE-COATED & DIRTY LOOK started to liven things up a little (love a CHOCOLATE-COATED DIRTY LOOK), but my feelings about this puzzle never got above neutral until I hit the revealer—that is, *my* revealer: not the literal revealer splashed across the middle of the grid (which I hadn't yet looked at), but the four-letter pre-revealer: MILK (28A: Beverage served alongside the treats in this puzzle). That answer ruined the actual revealer for me, but it tipped me off to the fact that there were "treats" in the puzzle, and as soon as I looked at those double-letters seemingly suspended in midair, I began to understand what was happening, but it still took another second or two to register the full visual effect—the double letters were creme, the adjacent black squares were cookie, and so I had four DOUBLE STUF OREOS diagonally stacked across my grid. What can I say? The visual gimmick works, and MILK really did a nice job of subtly cluing me in (whereas the longer revealer eventually just felt obvious and kind of redundant). So while I don't think the theme answers themselves are any great shakes (AFTEREFFECT? Isn't that just ... an effect?), the concept and the execution are very nice. Those do look like cookies, and making the "creme" spell out STUF, doubly, is a clever way to make up for the fact that those double-letters are technically uncrossed.

I think I'm supposed to be impressed by CHOCOLATE-COATED running through the whole thing, but I don't think that answer fits well today. It's a very restrictive and completely unnecessary contrivance that likely results in our getting subpar answers like CLASSIC HITS and AFTER EFFECT as themers. Maybe it's just there coincidentally, but that seems unlikely. Feels planned. But I don't get why it would be part of your planning. If I think of the DOUBLE STUF OREOS as CHOCOLATE-COATED, that ruins the entire visual gag. You Cannot See The Creme If Your DOUBLE STUF OREOS are CHOCOLATE-COATED!!! And seeing the creme is 88% of the fun today (the other 12% is the DIRTY LOOK). Do they even make CHOCOLATE-COATED DOUBLE STUF OREOS? I don't see them on offer. Oh wait, here's some. They look creepy and awful, like the Oreos are being tortured. And the color scheme is all wrong. Just let the Oreo be, man.

The puzzle wasn't particularly hard, but it felt like it was at least trying to punch above Monday weight, which is all I ask from a mid-week puzzle, fight-wise. Sadly, some of that difficulty came from, uh, Laotian currency, and having to wait for crosses to see which KABOB spelling I was going to be dealing with, or from awk-seeming phrases like FED IN (63A: Entered, as data). AMORTIZES and OUTGROWTH both took a little doing. I had ASTA before TOTO (54D: Famous film pooch), which made my RHO an ETA (64A: Sigma preceder), which I could sense was wrong even as I wrote it in. The southern part of the grid was kind of hard because I had no idea who GERI Allen was (52D: ___ Allen, jazz pianist). Damn, looks like she's been in the puzzle before, and I just forgot. Let's get reacquainted with GERI Allen right now, shall we?

Bullets:

14A: Sch. whose mascot is Tim the Beaver (MIT) — I had no idea. If I'd ever seen this clue (got it all from crosses), I would definitely have guessed OSU (that's Oregon State University)

[Well I know who I'm taking in this fight]

42A: Bunny with a Brooklyn accent (BUGS) — this should've been instant, but I never think about BUGS's accent this way. I never think of him having an "accent" at all. I grew up in California, so I had no idea about regional accents beyond "Southern." BUGS was just BUGS. Sure, he talked funny, but "Brooklyn." That would not have registered. And when it doesn't register in childhood, it's hard to get it to stick in adulthood, however obvious it might seem when pointed out to you.
25D: Land of llamas and Llosa (PERU) — my brain tripped all over the pile of crosswordese in this clue. Main problem was reading Llosa as LHASA and thinking "well, llamas are in S. America, but LHASA is in Asia, so ... I'm confused." Llosa is of course Literature Nobelist Mario Vargas Llosa, a Peruvian (whether he owned llamas or not, I do not know).