Biblical name for Syria / WED 2-18-26 / Offensively odorous / ___ Aran, heroine of Nintendo's Metroid / Demon of Japanese folklore / Reduced to crumbs, say / Leader of the Sharks in "West Side Story" / Like some buns and bedrooms / One of the "six enemies of the mind," in Hinduism / Bluish-purple bloom

Constructor: Victor Schmitt

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: emoji puns — theme clues are emojis; theme answers are familiar expressions that are also figurative ways of describing those emojis:

Theme answers:

• SIGNS OF THE TIMES (21A: 🕰️⏳⏰)
• SYMBOLIC GESTURES (39A: 🤙👏👋)
• FIGURES OF SPEECH (57A: 💬🗣️🗯️) 

Word of the Day: COMMODORES (12D: Best-selling home computers of the 1980s) —

The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International (first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7–10, 1982, in Las Vegas). It has been listed in the Guinness World Records as the best-selling desktop computer model of all time, with independent estimates placing the number sold between 12.5 and 17 million units. Volume production started in early 1982, marketing in August for US$595 (equivalent to $1,940 in 2024). Preceded by the VIC-20 and Commodore PET, the C64 took its name from its 64 kibibytes (65,536 bytes) of RAM. [...] The C64 dominated the low-end computer market (except in the UK, France and Japan, lasting only about six months in Japan) for most of the later years of the 1980s.^[8] For a substantial period (1983–1986), the C64 had between 30% and 40% share of the US market and two million units sold per year, outselling IBM PC compatibles, the Apple II, and Atari 8-bit computers. [...] Part of the Commodore 64's success was its sale in regular retail stores instead of only electronics or computer hobbyist specialty stores. Commodore produced many of its parts in-house to control costs, including custom integrated circuit chips from MOS Technology. In the United States, it has been compared to the Ford Model T automobile for its role in bringing a new technology to middle-class households via creative and affordable mass-production. (wikipedia) 

• • •

I was recoiling from this one right from the start. Ugliness in the NW corner is a real tone-setter, and though I'm not sure I'd call that corner "ugly," exactly, it's real wobbly. AMES and RANDB are hoary repeaters, and when I had to change NOPE to (ugh) "NOT I" (3D: Terse denial), I was fairly confident that this puzzle was NOT going to be for I. Moved over one section and was subjected to ALDO ARAM LOCO (and ACUTE, which, as clued, I really only know (from years of French) as AIGU). And then one over again and I've got AAS, plural PASTAS, something called SAMUS (20A: ___ Aran, heroine of Nintendo's Metroid), the gosh dang AGORA (hoariest of repeaters). By the time I got to ESPIAL (lol come on) I was ready to throw in the towel. I got the first themer fairly easy, and I guess the concept is OK (those are all "signs" related to telling "time"), but it didn't strike me as particularly funny. Also, of all the themers, SIGNS OF THE TIMES is the worst in the plural. The others seem very comfortable in the plural, but I'm fairly certain I've mostly only heard "Sign of the Times" in the singular (I may be under the heavy influence of the Prince album Sign O' the Times here, but ... that's OK, I can't think of very many albums I'd rather be under the influence of). The theme was pretty straightforward. Meanwhile, the unpleasant fill just kept coming. In the end, not enough highs in the theme material, and quite a lot of lows in the fill. FICA USDA EHOW ... an ERR and ERE that are actually holding hands and screaming for attention rather than hiding in the corners and trying to stay inconspicuous, as they should (40D: Old-fashioned word that's a homophone of 49-Across). The theme itself is solid enough. Kind of dull, but at least average for the NYTXW. But the fill really weighed it down. NOISOME fill. Not quite the DREGS, but dreggish. 

I know SAMUS was in the puzzle last year some time (Mar. 1, it turns out). I remember not knowing SAMUS. Well, I re-didn't know it today. Also forgot which variety of "O"-ending crosswordese Gucci was. ERNO? ENZO? Had to wait for crosses, one of which was ARAM (??), which ... it's been a while (6A: Biblical name for Syria). The only way I know ARAM is from the William Saroyan novel My Name Is ARAM, and the only reason I know that is that I grew up in Fresno, CA (where Saroyan is from ... there is (or was) a theater named after him and everything). The Biblical ARAM I know only from crosswords, but I clearly don't "know" it since I needed crosses coming up with it today. If it seems unfamiliar to you, here, let me give you a quick visual explanation of why:

[xwordinfo]

This chart shows ARAM appearances over time. The blue is where Shortz took over. Look at that ARAM supply just get (rightly) choked off right around the turn of the century. From eleven appearances a year in the mid-'90s to just once in the last decade in 2026 (before today). This is what I mean about the grid feeling like it's weighed down by olden gunk. It all feels very familiar to me, but that's because I started solving in the '90s, when ARAMs were (sadly) plentiful. There's no cause for ARAM now. There's especially no cause in a little section of a not-terribly-demanding grid. Anyway, after I got out of the ALDO / ARAM / SAMUS triangle, nothing held me up much, except (briefly) those awful four-letter government initialisms (plural!) (USDA, FICA). I really thought things were picking up slightly in the south when I got NOXIOUS (a cool word!) (51A: Offensively odorous) ... only it wasn't NOXIOUS, it was NOISOME (a much less cool word). I think HUMDINGERS is my favorite thing in the grid—ironic, given that it's as olde-timey as a lot of this fill, but at least it has style and personality. I don't know in what world you choose a computer clue for COMMODORES over a musical clue, but I guess it's this world. Unfathomable. I actually didn't mind learning a little bit about the history of the Commodore 64 (see "Word of the Day," above), but if you bring out the COMMODORES for the first time in 42 years, it oughta be Lionel Richie & Co. and they better be playing something (seriously, three COMMODORES clues all time and none of them use the band? Just the name of Vanderbilt athletes and computers? Filing a discrimination suit right now).

[man, early music videos were wild (by which I mean tame, low-budget, adorable)]

Bullets:

• 70A: Reduced to crumbs, say (EATEN) — if you're eating a cookie, I guess, but "say" I'm eating steak? 
• 5D: Leader of the Sharks in "West Side Story" (BERNARDO) — the puzzle continues to overestimate how well I'll remember roles in old movies / musicals. I know Spielberg remade this very recently, but still, no hope for me here without crosses. Those crosses weren't hard to come by, and so eventually I ESPIALed BERNARDO. [Note: this is the 23rd ESPIAL of all time, and the thirteenth time it's been clued [Observation]—interestingly, ESPIAL has not been favored more in one time period than another. No time period seems to want it—it appears more than once in a calendar year just twice (1942, 1969)]
• 29D: Demon of Japanese folklore (ONI) — I don't love ONI as fill, but this Japanese-demon way of cluing ONI is by far the best way I've seen. Before the 2020s, most ONI clues referred to the Office of Naval Intelligence (e.g. [Clandestine maritime org.] or [The Navy's C.I.A.]). Occasionally, you'd get a partial. For a very brief period in 1994, Shortz experimented with cluing "ONI" as if it were "ON-ONE" ([1-___ (way to guard)], [2 ___ (doubled teamed)]. He gave that up pretty quickly, which was probably the right move. Nowadays, since 2020, Japanese demon is the standard reference.

[this ONI is preparing to squeegee your windshield. Terrifying!]

• 42D: ___ Howard, Oscar-nominated actor for 2005's "Hustle & Flow" (TERRENCE) — I knew this, but for some reason TERRENCE + "Oscar-nominated" made me think I was dealing with a different cinematic TERRENCE altogether. Turns out I was thinking of TERENCE (one-"R") Blanchard (Academy Award-nominated composer of the scores for BlacKkKlansman and Da 5 Bloods) 

That’s all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Perishable bit of apparel / WED 8-20-25 / Electronic setting on a floor model / Custom in Japanese food service / Expel with jeers / Actor Lamorne of Fox's "New Girl" / Frenemy of Betty in comics / Went letter by letter, to Brits / Material in some eco-friendly clothing / First receptionist on "The Office"

Constructor: Victor Schmitt

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: A single tumbling DIE (39A: Item seen rolling through this puzzle) — six sets of 3x3 shaded squares represent dice—or, apparently, a single tumbling DIE in six different states of "rolling"; every "O" on every DIE is a PIP (33D: What every "O" in this grid represents), and each side of the DIE is represented exactly once in the grid:

Theme answers:

• there aren't any except DIE and PIP

Word of the Day: Josephine TEY (9A: Mystery author Josephine) —

Elizabeth MacKintosh (25 July 1896 – 13 February 1952), known by the pen name Josephine Tey, was a Scottish author. Her 1951 novel The Daughter of Time, a detective work investigating the death of the Princes in the Tower, was chosen by the Crime Writers' Association in 1990 as the greatest crime novel of all time. Her first play Richard of Bordeaux, written under another pseudonym, Gordon Daviot, starred John Gielgud in its successful West End run. [...] MacKintosh's best-known books were written under the name of Josephine Tey, which was the name of her Suffolk great-great grandmother. // In five of the mystery novels, all of which except the first she wrote under the name of Tey, the hero is Scotland Yard Inspector Alan Grant. (Grant appears in a sixth, The Franchise Affair, as a minor character.) The best known of these is The Daughter of Time, in which Grant, laid up in hospital, has friends research reference books and contemporary documents so that he can puzzle out the mystery of whether King Richard III of England murdered his nephews, the Princes in the Tower. // The Franchise Affair also has an historical context: although set in the 1940s, it is based on the 18th-century case of Elizabeth Canning. The Daughter of Time was the last of Tey's books published during her lifetime. Her last work, a further crime novel, The Singing Sands, was found in her papers and published posthumously.

• • •

As with Monday's puzzle, which was just a list of some of the voices Mel Blanc did, the rationale here escapes me. It's one DIE ... "rolling through" the puzzle? To what end? Why? If we were really supposed to see a "rolling" DIE, then the various representations of that DIE wouldn't be positioned like this. No one DIE could ever "roll" through those six positions, unless it was rolled into some kind of box with sides that would allow it to careen around. The visual effect of "tumbling" just isn't there. But then nothing is there. You've got each side of a DIE, the "O"s are PIPs ... and that's it. That appears to be the whole of the gimmick. No particular game is being represented. Since it's just the one DIE, there is no ... outcome? At first I thought this puzzle was going to have something to do with Yahtzee!, but that would entail five dice, not six, and anyway, as you know, these aren't six dice—these are the six sides of a single DIE. Tumbling. For some reason. Pretty thin. And the one word that might've been brought in as a bonus answer (ROLLED) ... isn't (3D: Like some oats).

From a structural POV, there are two challenges, which the constructor meets quite well. Actually, it's one challenge that has to be met two times—the triple-"O" sequence. That "6" side forces a nearly abutting pair of "OOO" phrases, the type of phrase you don't see TOO OFTEN oh hey, look at that, there it is. Still, you *don't* see it too often, and here, you've got two: TOO OFTEN and (my favorite) BOO OFF STAGE. It's very inventive, and for that reason maybe feels a little home-made, a little loose, a little improvised, drifting into EAT A SANDWICH territory a little, but I like it, perhaps because I've heard the phrase used in real life (if Eminem's "Lose Yourself" can be said to be real life). 

["I've been chewed up and spit out and BOOed OFF STAGE..."]

Those triple-"O" answers give the grid some much-needed pizzazz, as do SCOUT'S HONOR and the best answer in the grid: DOG KISS! (47A: Slobbery smooch). I miss slobbery smooches. We lost our dogs and then almost immediately, completely unexpectedly, became a cat house (which is what happens when you find a kitten literally under your house). I love my cats, but slobbery smoochers, they are not. Most of the time they barely seem to tolerate us. They put on the appearance of "loving" when they want food. And they kinda sorta like being in the same room we're in. But, yeah, the love appears to be completely, overwhelmingly one-way. We're obsessed with them, they mostly ignore us. I know snuggly cats exist. I had one once. But ours ... no. Too much ... let's call it "dignity," though considering how much they barf, fall off furniture, etc. that may be too generous.

[My dad, Lola]

Beyond that good longer fill, this grid is somewhat overfilled with less pleasant short stuff. Old crosswordese like ALMA TEY (whom we've seen twice this week?!), and then a slew of less-than-great stuff like ELMST VPS SAN CEE APEMAN REC ONO YEP ERE LEI SRO (also twice this week!?!?) NOTIPS ORI NAV ABE TSA MSG ... any of these answers would be OK on their own, but in high dosage like this, it wears.  I'm quite sure the visual gimmick of the rolling DIE put a lot of pressure on the grid—all those fixed "O"s would've made it difficult to fill the grid cleanly. And isolating those DIE shapes probably also contributed to the grid's being somewhat choppy, which in turn makes for a lot of short answers. So subpar fill is the price you pay for the gimmick. The gimmick just doesn't seem substantial enough to justify the trade-off.

Bullets:

• 1D: Change seeker (BEGGAR) — winced at this one. There's just something so condescending and dehumanizing about calling the person who "seeks change" from you a BEGGAR. I'm sure I'm more sensitive than I ought to be here, but I guess I don't mind providing counterbalance to the absolute cruelty being visited upon unhoused people in this country. While I'm being "oversensitive," please keep all HP content, including Ron Weasley and his PET RAT, out of my grid. Embarrassing that constructors / editors keep going to this poisoned well.
• 22A: Only U.S. prez born in Kentucky (ABE) — Andy Beshear was born in Louisville. I don't really have a horse in the 2028 race yet, but ... we could do worse (have done worse, are currently doing much worse).
• 59A: Frenemy of Betty in comics (VERONICA) — never ever gonna be mad at Archie Comics content. My daughter absolutely devoured every Archie imprint for like six years of her life ... maybe more. My house and office are still full of digests and double digests, despite the fact that I have given scores of them away to my comics students. I actually find reading Archie oddly soothing, esp. the older Archies. My favorite Archie artist is Harry Lucey. Yes, I have a favorite Archie artist. Here's some crossword-related Archie content—featuring VERONICA—that my friend Doug sent me the other day:

• 43D: Actor Lamorne of Fox's "New Girl" (MORRIS) — absolutely no idea. Easy to infer from crosses, but ... nope. And because of kerning issues, I'm not even sure if it's "Lamorne" or "Lamome," hang on ... OK, it's Lamorne, with an "r" (that makes more sense), and ... weirdly, I wondered, after I got MORRIS, "wait, is this the guy who played Garrett MORRIS on Saturday Night (2024)?," which I saw for the first time earlier this month. And it is! I remember noticing that the actor who played MORRIS was also named MORRIS, and I thought "wow, is he being played by his son??" But it appears that Lamorne MORRIS and Garrett MORRIS are, in fact, unrelated. 

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]
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Juvenile locust / SUN 4-20-25 / Peach or plum, botanically / Little flap, maybe / Hotheaded liberal politico who's eager to hear? / Dam near the Philae Temple of Isis / Plant that was a top-five girl's name in the 1970s / Smitten person's declaration / "Suh-weet! I love this sandwich cookie!"? / Group that Tiger hires to install wall art? / Makeup of some metallic bonds

Constructor: Victor Schmitt and Tracy Bennett

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: "Double Vision" — three-word answers where first part of middle word is the same as the first word and last part of middle word is the same as the last word(s) [... yes, that is an accurate description, cool]

Theme answers:

• WOODS WOODSCREW CREW (25A: Group that Tiger hires to install wall art?)
• SPAM SPAMALOT ALOT (41A: Send fan mail en masse to a Monty Python production?)
• MAD MADISON IS ON (60A: Angry early president can be seen now in TV footage?)
• DEM DEMAGOG AGOG (85A: Hotheaded liberal politico who's eager to hear?)
• PRO PROCURES CURES (104A: Pharmacist comes through for customers?)
• RED REDACTION ACTION (122A: Editor's strike?)
• POST POSTAGE AGE (3D: Email era?)
• WHOO! WHOOPIE PIE! (56D: "Suh-weet! I love this sandwich cookie!"?)

Word of the Day: IAN Somerhalder (126A: Actor Somerhalder) —

Ian Joseph Somerhalder (/ˈsʌmərhɔːldər/ SUM-ər-hawl-dər; born December 8, 1978) is an American former actor and current business owner. He is known for playing Boone Carlyle in ABC's science fiction adventure drama television series Lost (2004–2010) and Damon Salvatore in the CW supernatural teen drama series The Vampire Diaries (2009–2017). (wikipedia)

• • •

My brain feels like it's melting—is that really how you spell "DEMAGOG"—I could've sworn there was a "-ue" on the end of it. [Looks it up] Oh thank god. I'm correct. According to merriam-webster dot com, "DEMAGOGUE" is the spelling—under "variants" it says "less commonly DEMAGOG." I'd say "way less commonly." That answer was probably the hurtiest of the lot, not just because DEMAGOG was spelled bizarrely, but because nothing in the clue really indicated demagoguery at all. Being a "hot-headed politico" does not make you a DEMAGOG(UE). Needless to say, the theme kind of went off the rails for me there. The rest of it meandered from fine to bland to awkward. Some of the theme answers seemed pretty snappy (POST POSTAGE AGE, MAD MADISON IS ON, SPAMS SPAMALOT A LOT), but some were just too contrived to be funny (WOODS WOODSCREW CREW) or just kind of blah (PRO PROCURES CURES—"PRO" seems very weak as a stand in for "Pharmacist"). Had some trouble with "WHOO! WHOOPIE PIE!" mostly because "WHOO!" doesn't really track (for me) as a "Suh-weet!" stand-in. "Woo hoo!" is the expression I was looking for (the fact that I live under the deep and abiding influence of Homer Simpson may have something to do with that). I also haven't seen / thought of a WHOOPIE PIE in years. Decades? People still eat these? The only "sandwich cookie" I know is, well, you know.

The puzzle was pretty easy overall, though some of those themers were hard to parse (despite the fact that they should've been *easier* to parse than usual, given the repetitive nature of the theme). And some of the fill today proved a little elusive. The one that held me up the most was DANAE (118A: Mother of Perseus). I deal with classical mythology a lot in my classes, but somehow DANAE never comes up. Is she famous for anything else besides being Perseus's mother? Nope, not really. That answer was in the thick of the toughest section for me, connecting PETDOOR (hard to get from clue) (101D: Little flap, maybe) to URACIL (109D: RNA base). But when I say this section was "the toughest" for me today, it really wasn't that tough. None of it was. I had to work a little, that's all. I guess I had to work a little over in the E/SE as well, where ABODE had a really tricky clue (96A: Liver spot?) (i.e. the spot ... where one ... lives), and ADVENTURE seemed like it wanted to be ... something else (90D: Thrill-seeker's pursuit). I was considering ADRENALIN. And ugh, that section had that horrible manosphere "thought" "leader" guy in it, why, why, why would you do that? No one wants that. Sadly, there aren't any other suitably famous ROGANs you can go to for that clue. It's either use the podcast guy or tear it out and refill the grid some other way. I think you know what way I'd lean.

[102A: Smitten person's declaration]

Very easy-to-understand theme today. Took me exactly this long to pick it up:

I read the clue (3D: Email era?), took one look at the title (always a good idea on Sundays), and in went POST POSTAGE AGE. Having the core concept locked down made the rest of the themers much easier, even if, occasionally, they were weird enough to flummox me for a bit. Outside of the aforementioned DANAE and ABODE sections, the only part of the puzzle that felt somewhat hard to get ahold of was the aforementioned DEMAGOG, which had both BILOBA and STREGA running through it. I tried to spell BILOBA all kinds of ways: BILBAO? BILBOA? I feel like Ginkgo BILOBA used to be, like a trendy supplement for a while? In the '90s? Is it still? It's supposed to help with memory or something. (52D: Ginkgo ___ (tree species)). If only there was a supplement that could help me remember ... here, I'll use my favorite supplement: the internet [click click click]. Yes, "brain supplement." "The European Medicines Agency Committee on Herbal Medicinal Products concluded that medicines containing ginkgo leaf can be used for treating mild age-related dementia and mild peripheral vascular disease in adults after serious conditions have been excluded by a physician" (wikipedia). As for STREGA, I made it my Word of the Day, not too long ago, and that ... kinda helped (62D: "___ Nona" (children's book based on a folk tale)). I still wanted wrong words at first: STRADA, maybe? Still not loving STREGA as an answer, but at least this time it didn't take me completely by surprise. 

[111D: Singer with the 2021 hit album "Solar Power"]

Observations and explanations:

• 55A: Dam near the Philae Temple of Isis (ASWAN) — this answer keeps catching my eye and every time I think "why is A SWAN" in this puzzle? How is that even being clued? ... oh, right, the dam." 
• 70A: Go beyond the opponent's baseline, in tennis (OVERHIT) — only just debuted a few years ago (2019), though it appeared in a NYT acrostic a few years before that. "Baseline" is the example of the thing being exceeded each time, except for the one time it was [Send beyond the green, say]. I would've thought "OVERSHOOT" for golf, but golf's not really my thing, to say the least, so sure, golf too, why not? LOL when I google [overshoot the green] my first five hits are cryptic crossword clue explanation sites. But after those, yes, looks like "overshoot (the green)" is def a real golf concept. (PS: the cryptic clue in question: [Overshoot the green badly, though not with the driver (9)]. Can you solve it? Answer below*. 
• 112A: Plant that was a top-five girl's name in the 1970s (HEATHER) — never thought about it, but yeah, went to school with a number of HEATHERs, and HEATHER Locklear and HEATHER Graham were famous actresses of roughly my age (a little older and a little younger, respectively), but then, sometimes in the '90s it looks like, the HEATHER (and Jennifer, and Amy) market collapsed, and the Brittany / Caitlin / Madison apocalypse began... 

• 129A: What very punctual people arrive on (THE DOT) — very weird to have THE DOT not following a specific time. "I'll be there on THE DOT!" What dot!?!?
• 6D: Certain queer identity, for short (ARO) — as in "aromantic." 
• 16D: Makeup of some metallic bonds (ARCWELDS) — don't remember this at all. Must've worked my way around it using crosses. If you arcweld, you weld using an arc created by electricity.
• 45D: Juvenile locust (NYMPH) — ah, locust taxonomy! Finally a subject I'm an expert in! (shouted someone, possibly ... but not me). 
• 85D: Peach or plum, botanically (DRUPE) — basically, a stone fruit. I learned this word from crosswords ... and then crosswords promptly stopped showing it to me (it's been 17 years!!!!? and only the second appearance in the last 34 years ... this surprises me; really thought the word was more common)

[RAH, lol]

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Longtime constructor and all-around smart guy Natan Last has a book about crossword puzzles coming out later this year called Across the Universe: The Past, Present and Future of the Crossword Puzzle. If I had an advance copy (hint hint!) I'd be able to tell you all about it. But I'm quite sure it's going to be good. We're in a mini-boom period for crossword books. Last year we got Anna Schechtman's wonderful Riddles of the Sphinx: Inheriting the Feminist History of the Crossword Puzzle, and now there's Natan's book (due out the day before my birthday: Nov. 25, 2025)

Here's Natan with the prepublication hype:

My book Across the Universe: The Past, Present, and Future of The Crossword Puzzle, is now available for pre-order! If you can, would you pre-order it through Bookshop, Books-A-Million, Barnes and Noble, or your local bookstore? 

Pre-orders help books get attention and remain a powerful way to support authors. I've been lucky to receive an early blurb from Stefan Fatsis, the bestselling author of Word Freak, who calls Across the Universe "a gridful of insight and pleasure ... a deft and deep exploration of the crossword puzzle’s obsessive grip on American life." 

In the book, I go through the history of crosswords, starting with the very first puzzles in the yellow journalism-tinged era of the 1910s, plus a postwar crossword craze in which solving competitions, crossword musicals and movies, and black-and-white-checkered outfits were all the rage. I elaborate my own history with the puzzle too, from combing through archives in Will Shortz’s basement to being invited onto a Martha Stewart episode dedicated to puzzles (she said she solved more while she was in prison). All the while, I track how the puzzle’s identity is constantly shifting—becoming, in different eras, a frivolous diversion, a literary and artistic object (including for some of my own writerly heroes like Gertrude Stein, Vladimir Nabokov, and T.S. Eliot), the latest game for AI to conquer, and even a primary source of revenue for the modern newsroom. 

You can read excerpts from the book in The New Yorker and The New York Times; the Times piece is about the role of games in moments of crisis, and, unfortunately, is as relevant as ever. I'll be having some events once the book comes out, and I'll keep you posted on that. But for now, pre-order if you can! 

Both Anna and Natan are in their 30s now, but have been constructing since they were teenagers, so there's a ton of experience there, as well as a still relatively youthful perspective on recent crossword history. I hope I get an advance copy of Natan's book at some point, so I can promote it in greater detail later in the year, but I'm gonna pre-order one today either way. If I end up with two copies, fine: it'll make a nice gift.

*[Overshoot the green badly, though not with the driver (9)] = PASSENGER 

• Cryptic part of the clue: "Overshoot" = PASS; "green badly" = anagram of "green" = ENGER
• Definition part of the clue: "not with the driver" = in the car but not driving it = PASSENGER

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Odysseus' faithful dog / MON 3-24-25 / Like seaweed or raw octopus / K-pop group with an "army" of followers / Person who has reached near-mythical status / Call of Duty handle, e.g. / Vehicle in a light rail system / Character in "Frankenstein" films who doesn't appear in the the Mary Shelley novel

Constructor: Victor Schmitt

Relative difficulty: Easy (solved Downs-only)

THEME: ALL OVER THE MAP (57A: Here, there and everywhere ... or where to find 20-, 33- and 41-Across's ends?) — last words of themers are all things you might find on a map:

Theme answers:

• BATHROOM SCALE (20A: Something you might step on before or after a shower)
• MORAL COMPASS (33A: Set of ethical standards)
• LIVING LEGEND (41A: Person who has reached near-mythical status)

Word of the Day: "The Boys" (38D: "The Boys" and "The Bear," for two) —

The Boys is an American satirical superhero drama series developed by Eric Kripke for Amazon Prime Video. Based on the comic book of the same name by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, it follows the eponymous team of vigilantes as they combat superpowered individuals (referred to as "Supes") who abuse their powers for personal gain and work for a powerful company (Vought International) that ensures the general public views them as heroes. The series features an ensemble cast that includes Karl Urban, Jack Quaid, Antony Starr, Erin Moriarty, Dominique McElligott, Jessie T. Usher, Chace Crawford, Laz Alonso, Tomer Capone, Karen Fukuhara, Nathan Mitchell, Elisabeth Shue, Colby Minifie, Aya Cash, Claudia Doumit, Jensen Ackles, Cameron Crovetti, Susan Heyward, Valorie Curry, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan. [...] The Boys premiered its first season of eight episodes on July 26, 2019. A second season premiered on September 4, 2020, with the third season following on June 3, 2022. In June 2022, the series was renewed for a fourth season, which premiered on June 13, 2024. In May 2024, the series was renewed for a fifth and final season, which is expected to premiere in 2026. As part of a shared universe, a spin-off web series (Seven on 7) premiered on July 7, 2021, an adult animated anthology series (Diabolical) premiered on March 4, 2022, and a second live-action television series (Gen V) premiered on September 29, 2023. // The series has been nominated for eight Primetime Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Drama Series in 2021, and has won seven Critics' Choice Super Awards and six Astra TV Awards. (wikipedia)

• • •

Yes, those are all parts of a map. They can all be found on different parts of a map, possibly all on the same map, so ... sure, that revealer works. It's not exactly exciting, but it's kind of a textbook Monday: straightforward, clean, easy. Not sure why cheater squares were needed (black squares after "CCS" and before "NSA")—just makes the short fill shorter. With a theme this undemanding, should've been easy enough to fill the grid without resorting to that kind of crutch, but whatever—that's a technicality that no one is really gonna notice. The theme is basic—last words all share a common trait, and those same words are used in different (non-thematic) contexts in each of their respective answers. That is, non-map kind of "scale," non-map kind of "compass," non-map kind of "legend"—though the compasses are at least vaguely similar, in that both of them concern direction. The only way to take "compass" a truly different direction would've been to have it be the kind of compass you use to draw circles. But I think making the compass figurative (as it is in MORAL COMPASS) is a sufficient change of meaning. Best not to think about it all too much. The themers all end in different map elements. That's it. That's the puzzle. It's Monday. It's fine.

The short fill is the one place this puzzle falls off a little, but not in ways that are gonna make anyone throw their puzzle across the room. SRI URSA BTS SSN ORR ETTA etc. Nothing you really want to see there, but nothing you haven't seen a million times before, nothing that's gonna give you trouble, so nothing that's likely to register as truly bothersome. Solving Downs-only, I can tell you that the only short fill that really (*really*) bothered me is ROLD (14A: ___ Gold, pretzel brand). Awful. Truly awful. No excuse for a non-word like that on an easy Monday. And in a section where you've added a cheater square to make filling the grid easier, it's really inexcusable. Cheater squares are what you add because you need to get *rid* of things like ROLD. As a Downs-only solver, you need the Acrosses to be recognizable things, and ROLD was Not. I assumed I had a mistake there, but couldn't see what it could be. ROLD went right through the one answer up top that I was struggling with—the poorly clued SLIMY (7D: Like seaweed or raw octopus). I assume that I'm supposed to think of the seaweed and octopus as edibles (why else would "raw" be in there), and I've never thought of edible seaweed as SLIMY. Nori (the edible seaweed I experience most often) is the opposite of SLIMY. So boo to that clue. And huge boo to ROLD, the worst debut I've seen in a good, long while. Not All Debuts Are Good. And now constructors are going to have it ROLD in their databases, and they're going to assume it's OK to use. And it may be—but only in the tightest of spots, not in a basic 76-word Monday grid. The northern section of today's puzzle is send-it-back bad. Just because it's an easy Monday doesn't mean you shouldn't polish every inch of your grid.

Only two other answers gave me pause during the Downs-only solve, making this among the easier Downs-only solve I've ever done. GAMER TAG was gibberish to me for a while (10D: Call of Duty handle, e.g.), until I'd inferred a bunch of crosses. I recognize the term, but honestly, even after I got GAME, the only thing I wanted was GAME NAME, and that seemed (and was) impossible. I also had some reluctance to enter TV DRAMAS (38D: "The Boys" and "The Bear," for two), since, if I recall correctly, The Bear won the Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series. [Looks it up]. Yep! Also the Golden Globe Award for Best Television Series—Musical or Comedy. Not at all self-evident that that show is a TV Drama. As for The Boys, I have no idea. I don't have anything to do with Amazon anymore. 

Bullets:

• 62A: Character in "Frankenstein" films who doesn't appear in the Mary Shelley novel (IGOR) — I don't think "fun facts" usually qualify as "fun," but this one kinda is. It's definitely a "fun" way to clue an answer that's been in the crossword countless times.

• 2D: Knight-___ (medieval character wandering in search of adventure) (ERRANT)) — this clue, also fun. Probably didn't need the whole parenthetical bit, but by getting "wandering" in there, you make explicit the word you're looking for ... plus, it just makes the concept in question more vivid. I studied medieval literature in grad school, so I've read about more knight-ERRANTs than I can remember. (Weirdly, I had a vivid grad school dream just last night, one in which there was some kind of reunion, and I was seeing certain people for the first time in 20+ years, and it was slightly stressful ... also, I realized *in the dream*, "... wait, why does everyone look the same? People would've aged." My dream brain does not have aging technology, apparently. 
• 
  44D: Country between Djibouti and Sudan on the coast of the Red Sea (ERITREA) — got it on the first guess, no crosses. This may seem like no big deal, but it feels like a big deal, in that ERITREA was not a country when my basic idea of world geography was set in stone (or nearly so) back in middle school. ERITREA only got its independence in 1993. In fact, I'm pretty sure I only learned about its existence because of crosswords (possibly in 1993 itself, when ERITREA first appeared as a country in the NYTXW: [Nation born May 24, 1993] (Sep 12, 1993)—I can't believe the NYTXW was ever that timely with its cluing!). ERITREA actually appeared many times before 1993, but only ever as a part of Ethiopia ([Former Italian colony], [Ethiopian province], etc.)), and never during the time in which I would've been solving (i.e. post-1991). ERITREA's capital is ASMARA—handy to know, as Asmara frequently appears on ERITREA clues, and is an answer itself, from time to time (12 times in the Shortz/Fagliano Era, *37* times before that).

I'm happy to announce (all this week) that a new edition of These Puzzles Fund Abortion is available now (These Puzzles Fund Abortion 5!). Donate to abortion funds, get a collection of 23 top-notch puzzles from some of the best constructors in the business—mostly standard U.S. crossword puzzles, but also some cryptic crosswords, variety puzzles, and even an acrostic. Rachel Fabi and C.L. Rimkus have done such a great job with these collections over the past few years, raising over $300,000 for abortion funds around the country. I support a number of charitable organizations, but hardly any of them give me crosswords in return. So I'm going to give TPFA5 my money today [update: done!], and I hope you do too. Here's the link.

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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