Creature that grows longer in a classic video game / TUE 10-3-23 / Brightest light in Cygnus / Ancient inhabitant of Scotland / MTV prize whose trophy features an astronaut / Motormouth ___ "Hairspray" role for Queen Latifah / Roman goddess who is the equivalent of the Greek Nike / Native language in Oslo

Constructor: Troy Laedtke

Relative difficulty: Easy, mostly

THEME: SNAKE (48D: Creature that grows longer in a classic video game (also in this puzzle when it "eats" a black square) — shaded squares for a snake chain, with each snake name getting longer as the chain progresses (across the black squares, which I guess here are "food" that make the snakes get progressively longer)

The snakes, in order (each one "longer" (i.e. containing more letters) than the next):

• ASP
• MAMBA
• GARTER
• ANACONDA
• BOA CONSTRICTOR

Word of the Day: SNAKE (48D) —

Snake is a sub-genre of action video games where the player maneuvers the end of a growing line, often themed as a snake. The player must keep the snake from colliding with both other obstacles and itself, which gets harder as the snake lengthens. It originated in the 1976 two-player arcade video game Blockade from Gremlin Industries where the goal is to survive longer than the other player. The concept evolved into a single-player variant where a snake gets longer with each piece of food eaten—often apples or eggs. The simplicity and low technical requirements of snake games have resulted in hundreds of versions—some of which have the word snake or worm in the title—for many platforms.

1982's Tron arcade game, based on the film, includes snake gameplay for the single-player Light Cycle segment, and some later snake games borrow the theme. After a version simply called  Snake was preloaded on Nokia mobile phones in 1998, there was a resurgence of interest in snake games as it found a larger audience. (wikipedia)

• • •

Weird to be a middle-aged man who lived through and participated in the "classic video game" game era ('70s/'80s) and still have absolutely no idea what this "classic video game." None. Zero. I guess Blockade was the original "snake game" and then ... there were more ... but I never played them and no one I know played them and I never even saw one so ... it's like it all happened in a parallel universe. Disconcerting. I remember playing Missile Command, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Asteroids, Space Invaders, Frogger, Ms. Pac-Man, Dig-Dug, Tempest, Berzerk ... and many more! But nope, no Blockade, and no "snake games" that I can remember. So whatever this theme was supposed to do for me, nostalgia-wise, it just couldn't do. Just an uncanny feeling to be Totally Unaware of a "classic video game" from my childhood. I stared at this puzzle for longer than I wanted to, trying to figure out the theme, especially the "when it 'eats' a black square" part. But then I saw that the shaded squares (which form a snake-like chain) contain the names of snakes, with each snake name getting one letter longer as it progresses down the chain. So I guess the 3-letter ASP "eats" the black square that follows it and becomes ... wait, MAMBA is *5* letters. Garter 6 but then ANACONDA 8, so ... I don't get it. The names get bigger, but they do not get bigger by one square at a time. So, once again, I don't know what this puzzle is trying to do. Maybe eating "a [singular] black square" just makes the snake grow longer generally, so the amount it gets longer is actually irrelevant. That must be it. [Infinite shrugging] Maybe if I had played, or even known about the existence of, these so-called "SNAKE" games, the whole concept would be clearer. Undoubtedly this is true. So weird to feel like I've flickered over into a mirror world with different classic video games, or like I've had a *very* specific part of my brain wiped.

The solving experience was painfully easy and painfully choppy through the middle. The easiness and choppiness were definitely related, as the NW corner took at least a little thought, and then it was just a sprint (a choppy, unpleasant sprint, but a sprint), through the snaky regions. The longer answers had some appeal, but the snake stuff really didn't, largely because the snake stuff is entirely unclued and since it's Tuesday, you absolutely Do Not have to even see the snake stuff to make sense of the grid. Clues through there are all very straightforward. Bizarre attempt to make VESTIGIAL a theme answer here (13A: Like the "legs" on a 48-Down). Not sure what that's about, VESTIGIAL is a nice answer on its own, as is COOKIE JAR. The NW was rickety enough (DENEB, SRTA, REI) that it gave me bad vibes and some trepidation about what was to come. The vibes were bad enough that I stopped and took a screenshot to remember them by:

But then I got into the center and things got so fast and so easy that the bad vibes kind of went away. Overall the grid wasn't terrible. I just don't really have any connection to this theme, and since the theme had no effect on my solving experience, the overall effect was that of solving a very easy themeless riddled with very short answers, i.e. not a very good time, but not an excruciating one either. I assume that if this game type means something to you, the experience was more exhilarating. Hoping to find more exhilaration for myself tomorrow. See you then.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

PS While it might feel like Centipede is a relevant game here because of the serpentine movement of the title creature, it’s not actually an example of the game type in question: Centipede was a shooter. You don’t feed the centipede. You shoot it. 

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