Maori ceremonial dance / WED 11-27-24 / Singer known as the "Queen of Tejano Music" / Good-looking couple? / Possesses a certain je ne sais quoi

Hi, everyone, it’s Clare (again)! You thought you were rid of me for a month, but I’m actually back to cover the last Wednesday of November, too. Let’s all collectively wish Rex a happy (now belated) birthday! And let’s also just forget I signed off yesterday by saying I’d see everyone in December and already wished people a happy Thanksgiving. We’ll just apply that all to this write-up, instead. The peril of doing these posts back-to-back is that I don’t have anything exciting to tell you about my sports teams, and I know how much you all look forward to that. 

Anywho, on to the puzzle…

Constructor: Jill Singer

Relative difficulty: Medium-challenging (for a Wednesday)

THEME: THE THREE SISTERS — (39A: Corn, beans and squash, in Mesoamerican tradition ... or a hint to six answers in this puzzle) — the theme answers are two groups of three famous sisters

Theme answers:

• ANNE (5A: Member of an 1800s literary family) 
• CHARLOTTE (17A: Member of an 1800s literary family) 
• EMILY (18A: Member of an 1800s literary family) 
• KOURTNEY (45A: Member of a 2000s showbiz family) 
• KIM (50A: Member of a 2000s showbiz family) 
• KHLOE (61A: Member of a 2000s showbiz family)

Word of the Day: H MART (3D: "Crying in ___," best-selling memoir of 2021)) —

Crying in H Mart: A Memoir is a 2021 memoir by Michelle Zauner, singer and guitarist of the musical project Japanese Breakfast. It is her debut book, published on April 20, 2021, by Alfred A. Knopf. It is an expansion of Zauner's essay of the same name which was published in The New Yorker on August 20, 2018. The title mentions H Mart, a North American supermarket chain that specializes in Korean and other Asian products. After Zauner's mother Chongmi died of pancreatic cancer in October 2014, Zauner frequently made trips to H Mart, an experience she chronicled in her New Yorker essay and in "Real Life: Love, Loss and Kimchi" which won Glamour Magazine's 11th essay contest. (Wiki)

• • •

The idea of THE THREE SISTERS (39A) is clever — as long as you’re OK with the Bronte and Kardashian sisters being put on the same level. (I’m not.) Basically, I like how the groupings are structured and that the puzzle focuses on women. And it’s executed well. But… the Kardashian sisters in the puzzle? Really? I get that the idea was to have an older reference juxtaposed with a more modern one — and there are fewer famous trios of sisters than you might imagine — but it just felt wrong to have these two families together. As much as I hate “Wuthering Heights,” I was more than happy to see EMILY Bronte (18A) in the puzzle but groaned when I realized the puzzle was going to make me put in each Kardashian sister. One family had talent! Contributed to society! Wrote some of the best books in literary history! The other… 

If you can get past the Kardashian thing, there were a number of points to like about the puzzle. In particular, I enjoyed ROOT WORDS (63A: Linguistic "stems"), ERSATZ (30D: Fake), and GATEAU (25D: Patisserie purchase). I loved TORTOISES (37A: Symbols of longevity in Chinese iconography) and how the answer was clued. Having ICU (31A: Hospital dept. that sounds like a sentence), indicating the sentence “I see you,” crossing I SEE (31D: “Understood”) was clever. There was a thread in the puzzle of words in different languages, which I rather enjoyed — BEL ESPRIT (66A) (French), ERSATZ (30D) (German), GATEAU (25D) (French), NOEL (58D) (French), EIRE (4D) (Gaelic), SAN (48A) (Spanish), OLE (64D) (Spanish), and HAKA (40D) (Maori). The foreign words did make things slightly more challenging in spots. I’m glad Anthony DOERR (29D: Pulitzer-winning novelist) is in the puzzle — he’s the author of “All the Light We Cannot See,” which is a fantastic book, and “Cloud Cuckoo Land,” which pales only in comparison with the perfection of the former. 

This puzzle was so very heavy on proper nouns. I mentioned the proper nouns yesterday because there seemed to be a fair number. But today? Wow! I counted 26 in this puzzle. I mean you have to have the six names of the sisters, but even just starting the puzzle (going with the downs), you have five proper nouns in a row (ACCRA, COHEN, H MART, EIRE, and CLARA). CLARA Schumann (15D) was one I didn’t know (even though she’s *so* close to having the perfect name). She was a German pianist and composer and was apparently one of the most distinguished pianists of the Romantic era (at least according to Wikipedia). 

My struggle in the puzzle mainly came with BEL ESPRIT (66A: Clever person), which is a term I’ve just never heard before, and the literal translation, “pretty spirit,” doesn’t really suggest a clever person. That was atop SLED (68A: Flexible Flyer, for one), which was another challenging one for me because I’d never heard of a Flexible Flyer (though in hindsight the clue makes sense). Combine those difficulties with 46D: Fit together, where I tried to put “nestle” instead of NESTED, and I spent some precious time working that section out. I wish we didn’t need to have THE SAHARA (42A: Home to horned vipers and deathstalker scorpions), which looks especially clunky right on top of THE THREE SISTERS (39A) (even if the construction may have been deliberate). My last little gripe is with the clue for TYPE O (67A: Universal donor's classification) because O-negative is the universal donor. O-positive is not.

Misc.:

• The lyrics of “Over the Rainbow” (21D) made me think about the movie “Wicked” and its press tour. So here’s your daily reminder to really hold space for the lyrics to “Defying Gravity” today. (And if you don’t know what I mean, congrats on not being chronically online. You can see what I’m talking about here, which has been all over my social media feeds and is too iconic not to share. Holding hands is out — holding pointer fingers is in.) 
• I tried to close my window by only hitting ESC (20A: Key to close a window), but it didn’t work. I suppose that, these days, it needs to be used in combination with another key. 
• I’ve always been partial to TORTOISEs and turtles — did you know there’s a tortoise named Jonathan who hatched in 1832 who’s still alive?! And there are several mythologies that feature the idea of a turtle carrying the world on their back (either supporting or containing it), which is an idea I love.
• If you somehow managed to miss the HAKA (40D: Maori ceremonial dance) being performed in the New Zealand Parliament by MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke to protest and halt a bill being introduced, you must watch this powerful video. 
• My worlds collided a bit with "Crying in H MART" and BTS. The author was really excited when a BTS member, Jungkook, held up the book during a livestream, and she’s also said she’d love to cast another BTS member, RM, in the film adaptation! 

And that’s all from me!

Signed, Clare Carroll, who really won’t be back now until December (probably)

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Vancouver Island city for which a chocolate treat is named / WED 12-28-22 / Brit who wrote "The Vanishing Half" / "Rule" stating that the number of transistors per microchip doubles every two years / Compser Schumann

Constructor: Josh Goodman

Relative difficulty: Easy-ish (felt pretty fast for me, but it was also straight in my wheelhouse)

THEME: Once, Twice, er... Two Times a Lady — 53A - With 60-Across institution in which 19-, 25- and 37-Across are (thus far) the only three women ever to be inducted twice

Word of the Day: NANAIMO (12D: Vancouver Island city for which a chocolate treat is named) —

Nanaimo (/nəˈnaɪmoʊ/ nə-NY-moh) is a city on the east coast of Vancouver Island, in British Columbia, Canada. As of the 2021 census, it had a population of 99,863,^[2] and it is known as "The Harbour City." The city was previously known as the "Hub City," which was attributed to its original layout design, whose streets radiated from the shoreline like the spokes of a wagon wheel, and to its central location on Vancouver Island.^[4][5] Nanaimo is the headquarters of the Regional District of Nanaimo. (wikipedia)

ALSO

The Nanaimo bar /nəˈnaɪmoʊ/ is a bar dessert that requires no baking and is named after the Canadian city of Nanaimo in British Columbia.^[1] It consists of three layers: a wafer, nut (walnuts, almonds, or pecans), and coconut crumb base; custard icing in the middle; and a layer of chocolate ganache on top. (wikipedia) 

• • •

Hey everyone, it's Eli back for another day of fun (and apparently your second day in a row be a Liverpool fan)! I'm spending a rare rainy few days in LA catching up on some of the movies I missed in the last year - Glass Onion, Bros, RRR, Top Gun Maverick, and Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe. It's a pretty eclectic mix, but I actually liked all of them quite a lot. Today's puzzle appears to be the NYT debut for Josh Goodman, and according to his Twitter bio he's also remixed the Comedy Bang Bang plug bag theme 3 times, so he's good people in my book (#OhNo). 

As for the puzzle itself, I think I enjoyed it. The fill stretches thin in a few places, but it's a lot of theme to fit in for a Wednesday. By its very nature, the puzzle has a lot of proper nouns, which I know can throw some people off, but the trivia head in me has never really minded. 

Theme answers:

• TINA TURNER (19A: As part of a performing duo in 1991; as a solo artist in 2021)

• STEVIE NICKS (25A: As part of a band in 1998; as a solo artist in 2019)

• CAROLE KING (37A: As part of a songwriting duo in 1990; as a solo artist in 2021)

• ROCK AND ROLL (53A: With 60-Across institution in which 19-, 25- and 37-Across are (thus far) the only three women ever to be inducted twice)
• HALL OF FAME (60A: See 53-Across)

Regarding the theme, I guess my only question is, "Why now?" This year's induction ceremony was almost 2 months ago. If you're going to run something that feels like a tribute or event puzzle, I'm going to look for a reason. Ah well. At least it's a tight group of themers and a good excuse to post some great music. Tina Turner and Carole King also have had biographical jukebox musicals on Broadway, but not Stevie Nicks (what a story that could be). I digress.

I said above that the puzzle was easy-ish, but looking back over it to blog, I'm seeing a few things that would have tripped me up if I had noticed them at all while solving. I know I already highlighted it above, both in the title and the word of the day, but Nanaimo is a complete blank for me. Don't know the city, don't know the treat. It's fun to learn! I also didn't know BENNET (47A: Brit who wrote "The Vanishing Half"), and looking her up I was surprised to learn that her NAME is Brit and that she's actually American. That's some really solid cluing, assuming you know the name.

Getting back to movies of the year, Weird Al went to Cal State Poly in San Luis OBISPO (6A) and wrote a song about it before he had made a name for himself:

The "biopic" WEIRD was one of the silliest things I've ever seen, and I loved every minute of it. Daniel Radcliffe deserves an Oscar for his commitment to the bit. Also, Janelle MONAE (67A) was in Glass Onion, and she was fantastic in it, as one might expect. Pretty sure I highlighted her last time I blogged here, too.

Hey, look! I'm in the grid! ELI (51A: Former Giants QB Manning). One of my goals in life is to be prominent enough to become a new cluing option. I have a ways to go. 

Overall,  this felt like a solid debut puzzle, bearing the heavy burden of trying to figure out what a Wednesday puzzle should be. I think you have Rafa here tomorrow, but I'll be back again on Friday. See you all then!


Signed, Eli Selzer, False Dauphin of CrossWorld

[Follow Eli Selzer on Twitter]

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So-called "Godfather of the Teamsters" / WED 8-4-2021 / 1986 #1 hit for Patti LaBelle and Michael McDonald / "Full Metal Jacket" setting, in brief

Hi everyone, I'm Malaika, filling in (ha!) for Rex today. You might know me from 7xwords or from Boswords or from Crossword Fiend. Reading this blog is what got me started constructing puzzles, so it makes me feel very warm and fuzzy to help out. Anyway! On to the puzzle.

Constructor: BRANDON KOPPY

Relative difficulty: AVERAGE

THEME: FILM SPLICER — Each theme entry is an in-the-language phrase made up of two movie titles

Theme answers:

• MONSTER | MASH (17A: Classic song that starts "I was working in the lab late one night" [2003, 1970])
• WALL STREET | CRASH (23A: Start of the Depression [1987, 2004])
• CONTACT | US (33A: Line at the top or bottom of a website [1997, 2019])
• RUSH HOUR | TRAFFIC (46A: Commuter's headache [1998, 2000])
• FILM SPLICER (52A: Editing device suggested by 17-, 23-, 33- and 46-Across?)

Word of the Day: HOFFA (So-called "Godfather of the Teamsters") —

James Riddle Hoffa (born February 14, 1913 – disappeared July 30, 1975, declared dead July 30, 1982) was an American labor union leader who served as the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) from 1957 until 1971.

Hoffa became involved with organized crime from the early years of his Teamsters work, a connection that continued until his disappearance in 1975. He was convicted of jury tampering, attempted bribery, conspiracy, and mail and wire fraud in 1964 in two separate trials. He was imprisoned in 1967 and sentenced to 13 years. In mid-1971, he resigned as president of the union as part of a commutation agreement with US President Richard Nixon and was released later that year, but Hoffa was barred from union activities until 1980. Hoping to regain support and to return to IBT leadership, he unsuccessfully tried to overturn the order. (Wiki)

• • •

This theme was so over my head that I had to ask a friend to explain it to me! I have only heard of two of the eight movies mentioned (Crash, and Us), so nothing made any sense to me. (I know M*A*S*H is a show, but didn't realize it was a movie.) That's not to say that the other movies are not well-known (cursory Googling says they definitely are!), just that this theme was certainly not for me. As a result, it was hard to get excited about it, although it seems to be executed well?? Also, today I learned that "splice" means "to combine" rather than "to split apart."

I pretty consistently plodded through this puzzle, with no major break-throughs (due to not realizing the theme) or major hang-ups, except maybe in the central left, where I've never heard of FIFE (had PIPE) and I really struggled parsing CONTACT US. Once I had ????ACTUS, all I could see was "cactus" and was trying to figure out why on Earth a website would have a cactus on it. Beyond being, like, a plant nursery or desert retreat. 

A ton of those seven-letter downs were gimmes for me-- I put in TONE LOC (3D: "Funky Cold Medina" rapper), AP TESTS (12D: Hurdles for many honors students, in brief), and BASMATI (37d: Type of rice) with no crosses. But ultimately this played as a sort of lack-luster themeless for me.

Lots of First Lady content, with FLOTUS (58A: Michelle Obama or Jill Biden, informally) being cross-referenced by ELEANOR (26D: 58-Across between Lou and Bess). That abbreviation always reminds me of my favorite (jk, I have one thousand favorites) Veep scene, where Jonah refers to the president's dog as FDOTUS. I can't find a clip of that, so here's this instead. (Very NSWF, language-wise.)

Bullets:

• BEE (39A: Busy body?) — This felt super weird to me. I guess because you say "busy as a bee" and a bee.... has a body? Just felt off. 
• BARNARD (11D: Alma mater for Martha Stewart and Joan Rivers) — I didn't know that either of them went here, but this was a pretty easy get for me. I just finished watching Hacks on HBO, which was inspired by Joan Rivers, and it was lovely.
• ADWARS (61A: Mac-versus-PC and others) — Do people say this? Or is this just a thing we pretend people say so that we can fill our crosswords more easily?

Signed, Malaika "7x7 overlord" Handa

P.S. The New York Times announced that they are going to stop providing .puz files. I'm really excited for this because I think it means they'll be running more creative puzzles that the constraints of a .puz file do not allow. But other people are disappointed. Before you share your disappointment, here are some things to think about:

• Are there any other mainstream publications that provide .puz files for their puzzles?
• What percent of Times solvers do you think use .puz files to solve?
• Will I still have access to multiple different ways to solve the puzzle?
• Am I sharing my disappointment in a way that is constructive, or a way that is neutral, or a way that is entitled / condescending / hateful?

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Diamond stat / WED 3-31-21 / Soccer great with a statue in Buenos Aires / Japanese salad herb / Potpourri pieces

Hello! It’s Clare for the last Wednesday of the month (my law school professors seem determined to give me as much work as possible right before I’m scheduled to do the write-up for the puzzle on Tuesdays). Hope everyone has had a great March. Mine’s been suitably “mad,” with a lovely helping of the NCAA tournaments. Growing up in the Bay Area means I’ve been a longtime fan of the Stanford women (and Tara VanDerveer), so I’m hoping they can pull out the win. On the men’s side, Gonzaga has seemed so close for so long that I’d love to see them win the title. (But let’s hope that Drew Timme’s mustache doesn’t catch on.) Anywho, on to the puzzle!

Constructor: Trenton Charlson

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: BUILDING BLOCKS (41A: Smaller parts making up a larger whole … with a hint to the six groups of shaded squares in this puzzle) — Each of the shaded squares is a “block” that is a type of building

Theme answers:

• PAL-ACE (1A and 15A)
• PAG-ODA (6A and 16A) 
• SCH-OOL (10A and 17A) 
• CAS-TLE (71A and 74A) 
• TEM-PLE (72A and 75A) 
• CHA-LET (73A and 76A)

Word of the Day: ACACIA (2D: Tree that’s a favorite of giraffes) —

“Acacias are thorny trees with foliage that is bright green or bluish-green and has small blooms that may be creamy white, pale yellow or bright yellow… The acacia trees are able to tolerate extreme drought conditions due to their long sturdy root system that access deep ground water. They are an important food source for many large herbivores – especially giraffes. Giraffes are herbivores, which means they eat plant material like leaves high in the trees, and they can eat up to 29 kilograms of acacia leaves and twigs daily.” (areenaresort.com)

• • •

I’m generally not a huge fan of shaded squares in puzzles, but I thought the constructor did a nice job with this one. To me, the most impressive thing was how different the buildings in the puzzle are and how worldly it all is. PAGODA and TEMPLE are predominantly Asian. CHALET, CASTLE, and PALACE are broadly European. The only real outlier to me was SCHOOL. All the others conjured up lovely pictures, and then there’s… SCHOOL. Lots of schools aren’t even a single building. My law school has more than I can count. 

As a whole, I liked the long downs a lot. The clues/answers were varied and fresh, and the words themselves felt interesting for a crossword. For example: BIBLICAL (41D: Like Sodom and Gomorrah) and GRIMACE (45D: Not a happy face). COMMODES (13D: Going places?) is pretty old-fashioned, but it was still different and had enough pop that I liked it. SLAM DUNK (12D: Emphatic two-pointer) was my favorite answer. It might have helped with my solving that I had the tournament in the background, or it could be that I can’t stop thinking about 5-foot-11 UConn freshman Paige Bueckers. WNBA legend Diana Taurasi said Bueckers is the “best player in basketball already,” so, yeah, she’s pretty good. 

One thing I found odd was how many times Hercules appeared in some form in the clues. It seemed intentional — but to what end? The clue for 55D is a “Herculean” undertaking. For 74A, we have: Singer John whose middle name is “Hercules.” Then the clue for 51A is “Heracles” to Zeus, and “Heracles” is the Greek name for Hercules, which is the Roman name. 

I had some trouble getting GINSU (45A: Brand of knives touted in classic infomercials). I’d guess some others might not have known these, either, unless you were watching late-night television around 40 years ago and remember knives cutting through cans. Fun fact I learned from some post-puzzle googling: Ads for GINSU knives helped launch infomercials.

Misc.:

• Garden of Earthly Delights by BOSCH (10A) is a painting I’ve always loved and just been fascinated by. It’s so weird, but that just makes it more wonderfully delightful in its strange way. I got the chance to see it in-person, and I think I just stood there staring at it for 20 minutes.
• I simply think that OATEN (11D) is a very ugly word and does not belong in a crossword puzzle — or anywhere!.
• Thank you, “Dancing with the Stars” for teaching me years ago what the LINDY hop (44D) is. I’ve been just waiting to use this knowledge in a crossword puzzle. 
• I would like a pet rock (even if it was a FAD, 65A). I think I’d take really good care of it. I’m trying to become a plant Mom, and I think I might have more success taking care of a rock. (Plant parent warning: Don’t buy a Calathea unless you’re aware that this plant has a death wish!) 
• LILO (52A) and Stitch!! This movie and TV show was my childhood. It’s seriously underrated. I can’t tell you how many times I tried saying “blue punch buggy” like Stitch as a kid.

And that's it! Have a great April.

Signed, Clare Carroll, Paige Bueckers fangirl

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Family nickname / WED 2-24-21 / Indian musical pattern / Part of a nerve cell / Sticky wicket

Hello, all! It’s Clare — coming to you this time for the last Wednesday in February rather than Tuesday. This month has mostly flown by for me. People told me that I’d be bored in my final year of law school, but how can I be bored when they’re keeping me so busy with work? I’ve got multiple actual clients and papers to write and exams to study for and jobs to apply for and just… it’s a lot! Anywho, on to the puzzle!

Constructor: Andrew J. Ries

Relative difficulty: Fairly easy

THEME: PARADOX (59A: Logical contradiction … or an aural hint to what are found in 20-, 25- and 45-Across) — Each theme answer has a “pair of docs” in the circled parts of the answer

Theme answers:

• DEVILS DOZEN (20A: “Satanic” nickname for the number 13) 
• THE WHOLE TRUTH (25A: What a witness is sworn to tell) 
• DREADNOUGHT (45A: W.W I-era battleship)

Word of the Day: DREADNOUGHT (45A: W.W I-era battleship) —

The dreadnought was the predominant type of battleship in the early 20th century. The first of the kind, the Royal Navy's HMS Dreadnought, had such an impact when launched in 1906 that similar battleships built after her were referred to as "dreadnoughts," and earlier battleships became known as pre-dreadnoughts. Her design had two revolutionary features: an "all-big-gun" armament scheme, with an unprecedented number of heavy-calibre guns, and steam turbine propulsion. (Wiki)

• • •

If this is the type/quality of puzzle I get on a Wednesday, maybe I’ll just switch my official day of the month! I thoroughly enjoyed this puzzle. The theme (though I didn’t completely get it until after I solved the puzzle) was clever and fun.The whole puzzle felt clean and modern; the clues were creative. I’m not sure how else to say it — it was just a nice puzzle all around. 

Each of the theme answers itself was good, and the added bit of having “doctors” within each answer was a really nice touch. My favorite has to be “Doctor” WHO, which is my favorite TV show of all time. (David Tennant, the 10th Doctor, is the absolute best; and the current Doctor, Jodie Whittaker, is likewise fantastic.) Dr. NO is one of my favorite Bond movies, so I enjoyed seeing this in the puzzle. Dr. OZ? Make that a NO; his pseudo-science strains credulity more often than what I see on the science fiction TV show “Doctor Who.” Still, that’s quite an impressive and diverse array of doctors. 

Having WRAITH (5D: Spooky specter) and HELL (6D: Word spelled with “double hockey sticks”) cross DEVILS DOZEN (20A) was a great start to the puzzle (though I was sort of expecting a Halloween-esque spooky theme with that start). I also really liked the long downs — TWEET STORM (30D: Social media tirade), HOME DESIGN (26D: Subject for House Beautiful Magazine) and the full form of GEN XER (47D: Kid born in the ‘70s, say) are all nice and fresh. 

In a puzzle that was so clean, only two things really stood out to me, neither of which is of much consequence, but I’ve got to put on my Rex hat and critique somewhere in here! First, DEL TACO (37A) isn’t really a competitor of Chipotle, is it? This might just be my take, as someone who is borderline obsessed with Chipotle, but I’m not sure I’ve ever heard these two compared before. Second, I disliked having ECG (63A: Heartbeat recording: Abbr.) in the puzzle; there’s no way in this kind of situation to know that it’s not EKG. Google helpfully tells me that ECG is the English abbreviation, while EKG is the German abbreviation, but in the many, many hours of Grey’s Anatomy I’ve watched, I’ve only ever heard EKG, hence my confusion. Luckily, NARCO coming down was pretty easy, so I knew to switch it to ECG. 

My favorite part of the puzzle was definitely the clues. The constructor managed to clue some very typical crossword words in unusual ways, which I really appreciated. Probably my favorite was seeing 61A: Number of seasons played by baseball’s Seattle Pilots as ONE (61D). That’s just such a random — and interesting — clue. (After one season, the Pilots moved to Milwaukee and became the Brewers in 1970.) Then, having UFO (54D) clued as What Venus is sometimes mistaken for, due to its brightness was different. Same goes for PJS (32D: Togs for sawing logs?), TEETH (43A: Effectiveness of a law, metaphorically), ODIN (56D: Husband of Frigg, in Norse mythology), and ETAL (38D: Abbr. after the third co-author, perhaps). PHONE (32A: What’s answered but never asks a question, in a riddle) was also clued in a fun way.

Misc.:

• I can confirm we talk a lot in law school about whether something has TEETH (43D). 
• ZORRO (22D)— I loved watching these movies. I have such a distinct memory of watching the two ZORRO movies on the little portable DVD player I had when I was younger while riding in the car up to Tahoe to go skiing. And who wouldn't fall at least a little bit in love with in-his-prime Antonio Banderas? Or Catherine Zeta Jones, for that matter. 
• While I’ve never actually had GEL (12D) nails myself, I am a 20-something woman who has opened a copy of Vogue before, so I do know what they are! But I learned they may not have much traction among men of a certain age. (Right, Dad?)

I’m 99% convinced that this was a really great puzzle; the other 1% thinks that I’m just in an amazing mood because BTS just performed on “MTV Unplugged” and killed it beyond belief so everything feels right with the world. Because you need your regular dose of the best group on the entire planet, here is a song for your viewing pleasure:

 

And if, like me, you’re a big fan of the Coldplay song “Fix You,” here’s an extra-special treat that *gasp* is better than the original!

 

Signed, Clare Carroll, someone who briefly thought about becoming a doctor but who fainted in the ER on the first day of her internship. (My surgical mask was too tight!!)

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Alpine crossing over Austrian Italian border / WED 9-2-20 / Suffragist and longtime leader in the National Woman's Party / German grandparent affectionately / Middle-distance golf club / Some pepperoni orders informally / Difficult skating jump with backward takeoff

Constructor: Margaret Seikel

Relative difficulty: Easy (3:47)

THEME: CATCH PHRASE (60A: Popular expression ... or what the opposite to the answer of each starred clue is?) — theme phrases end with a word that means not "catch" but its opposite: "throw":

Theme answers:

• SUMMER FLING (16A: *Something reminisced about in the movie "Grease")
• GROUND CHUCK (10D: *Some hamburger meat)
• BRENNER PASS (24D: *Alpine crossing over the Austrian/Italian border)
• ELEVATOR PITCH (14D: *Sales spiel in 60 seconds or less, say)

Word of the Day: BRENNER PASS (24D) —

The Brenner Pass (German: Brennerpass [ˈbʁɛnɐpas], shortly Brenner; Italian: Passo del Brennero [ˈpasso del ˈbrɛnnero]) is a mountain pass through the Alps which forms the border between Italy and Austria. It is one of the principal passes of the Eastern Alpine range and has the lowest altitude among Alpine passes of the area.

Dairy cattle graze in alpine pastures throughout the summer in valleys beneath the pass and on the mountains above it. At lower altitudes, farmers log pine trees, plant crops and harvest hay for winter fodder. Many of the high pastures are at an altitude of over 1,500 metres (4,900 feet); a small number stand high in the mountains at around 2,000 metres (6,600 feet).

The central section of the Brenner Pass covers a four-lane motorway and railway tracks connecting Bozen/Bolzano in the south and Innsbruck to the north. The village of Brenner consists of an outlet shopping centre (supermarkets and stores), fruit stores, restaurants, cafés, hotels and a gas station. It has a population of 400 to 600 (as of 2011).

• • •

Really enjoyed solving this one (mostly), then got to the revealer and just sort of cocked my head like a dog when he is both interested and baffled. In trying to figure out what the revealer meant, I kept looking at the the entire *phrase* of each theme answer—you know, because the revealer says to. Then I just simplified matters and looked at the last words in the phrases, and bingo. Well, not quite "bingo!" which implies "aha, got it!" More like "bingo?" Because I wasn't entirely sure I understood. Because the concept is ludicrous. It's as if you wanted to use CATCHPHRASE as a revealer, got nowhere because there aren't enough synonyms for "catch," thought to yourself, "lots of synonyms for 'throw,' too bad there's no such word as THROWPHRASE," and then thought to yourself, "wait, a, minute! I got it!" So this puzzle basically exists because the word THROWPHRASE doesn't exist but the word CATCHPHRASE does. The theme is CATCHPHRASE but you've only got throwphrases, but that's OK, you just (to borrow a film production term) fix it in post! That is, write an "opposite" clue to justify the whole enterprise. I think this revealer is so dumb it's actually good. Like ... yeah, just go for it. I'll take loopy over corny Any day. And the themers themselves are so good, just on a stand-alone basis. I have one big objection to the themers, though, and that is — the song is "SUMMER NIGHTS!" I would've accepted SUMMER LOVIN' (had me a blast, happened so fast). I had SUMMER -ING and when I couldn't get "LOV" to fit in the remaining squares, I sincerely thought I had a rebus puzzle on my hands. What I'm saying is, please be precise with your "Grease" clues; the world is fragile enough as it is and these things matter. Thank you.

I predict one serious potential trouble spot for solvers, and that's at the BRENNER PASS / AMEN RA crossing. I think "E" is the best guess there, but AMEN RA—famous for being spelled a bunch of ways, most notably AMUN RA (the only spelling actually mentioned in the "Amun" wikipedia entry) (32A: Egyptian sun god). And I dunno, but BRUNNER PASS sounds *awfully* plausible to me. So yeah, I think that's close to being a Natick* for some folks, especially you can be absolutely text-book *correct* in the Across and get a Down that looks right enough. My trouble spot was 'ZAS (68A: Some pepperoni orders, informally), which, ugh, for several reasons, most notably a. it's just a dumb abbr. and I don't know anyone who actually unironically uses it, and b. it's Scrabble-f***king** of the rankest sort. "Shove a Z in the corner!" "But...?" "Shove it!!!" Also, this puzzle has weird crosswordesey patches, like ORBS over ZEROG over AMENRA, or that AGA SIR EES run in the SE (SIR is actually fine, the others less so). But wow the longer phrases really land today, both in the theme and non-theme answers. ALICE PAUL! (33D: Suffragist and longtime leader in the National Woman's Party) PENNILESS! (8D: Flat broke) Why do I like PENNILESS? It's both sad and full of common letters, and yet ... something about it is so vibrant and vivid. Give me melodrama! I'll take it. You can always shove ELON. I really wish the PRIDE clue had indicated "for short," because it's PRIDE MONTH that's celebrated (19A: Annual June celebration). Yes, people say PRIDE, but it's a shortening, so the clue should make that clear. OK, that's all. Nice work overall. Is this a debut? Anyway, I hope this constructor makes more puzzles.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

*Natick = two not-universally-known answers (typically proper names) crossing at an unguessable letter (typically a vowel)

**Scrabble-f***ing = when you misguidedly try to make your grid more "interesting" by shoving high-value Scrabble-tile letters into the corner(s) of your grid

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2002 basketball movie starring Lil Bow Wow / WED 8-5-20 / Major oenotourism destination / Believer in Five Thieves / Big draw for Icelandic tourism

Constructor: Michael Paleos

Relative difficulty: Medium (Easy except for the west, which, yeesh)

THEME: EVERYTHING BAGEL (39A: Breakfast order suggested by the answers to the starred clues) — answers to starred clues either begin or end with an ingredient in the seasoning for said bagel:

Theme answers:

• POPPY FIELD (17A: *Wicked Witch's trap for Dorothy in "The Wizard of Oz")
• OPEN SESAME (10D: *Storybook password)
• VERUCA SALT (29D: *Bratty girl in "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory")
• ONION DOMES (60A: *Colorful architectural features of Moscow's St. Basil Cathedral)

Word of the Day: GANYMEDE (42A: Largest moon in the solar system) —

Ganymede /ˈɡænɪmiːd/, a satellite of Jupiter (Jupiter III), is the largest and most massive of the Solar System's moons. The ninth-largest object in the Solar System, it is the largest without a substantial atmosphere. It has a diameter of 5,268 km (3,273 mi), making it 26% larger than the planet Mercury by volume, although it is only 45% as massive. Possessing a metallic core, it has the lowest moment of inertia factor of any solid body in the Solar System and is the only moon known to have a magnetic field. Outward from Jupiter, it is the seventh satellite and the third of the Galilean moons, the first group of objects discovered orbiting another planet. Ganymede orbits Jupiter in roughly seven days and is in a 1:2:4 orbital resonance with the moons Europa and Io, respectively. [...] In Greek mythology, Ganymede /ˈɡænɪmiːd/ or Ganymedes /ɡænɪˈmiːdiːz/ (Ancient Greek: Γανυμήδης Ganymēdēs) is a divine hero whose homeland was Troy. Homer describes Ganymede as the most beautiful of mortals, and in one version of the myth, Zeus falls in love with his beauty and abducts him in the form of an eagle to serve as cup-bearer in Olympus. (wikipedia)

• • •

Getting kind of tired of seeing men's names in the by-lines. Been almost two weeks since we've seen a solo woman constructor. Still can't believe that the inequity is this bad, this late in the game. Oh, hey, in totally unrelated news, did you see the Time article about the editor of the USA Today crossword, a certain Mr. (checks notes) Erik Agard? It's worth reading (and the USA Today crossword is now very much worth doing).  But on to this puzzle, which ... Shrug, I guess, is my main feeling. Those are definitely things that can be on an EVERYTHING BAGEL, though the seasoning mixture is in no way standardized or uniform, and seems very frequently to include garlic, so ... I dunno. I think you are supposed to be impressed that two of the themers actually cross the revealer. That's one of those "feats of construction" that just don't matter that much to me. Cool if you can pull it off, but if the core concept isn't great, then I just don't care how many themers you cram in there or whether they cross or not. So this theme is fine—some of the theme answers are nice in their own right—but not particularly innovative or clever.


Fill is decent if uninspired, until you get to the west, where it is inspired ... but not by any force of good. It's always a bad sign when my printed-out / marked-up puzzle has all the green ink in one section of the grid (green pen is what I use to highlight trouble spots). EKE BY is awful in its quaintness and MY GOSH is equally quaint but much more frustratingly vague (lots of stuff could've gone after the initial "MY";  I first had "MY OH MY") (36D: "Goodness me!"). "LIKE MIKE" is a minor movie from 18 years ago, and since it stars the former Lil' Bow Wow (now just Bow Wow, I think), I wanna say ... woof! And yet when I looked the movie up just now the cast list was kind of amazing—Fred Armisen, Crispin Glover, Jimmy Kimmel, Eugene Levy (!), Vanessa Williams, Robert Forster (!!), and, best of all, the legendary Anne Meara (!!!). I didn't like seeing the title while solving, but now I'm starting to come around on it. One answer I will never come around on, however, is PREV (26A: <<< button: Abbr.). Let's start with the fact that PREV under any circumstances, with any clue, is a horrible abbr. Now throw in the fact that three (3) (???) left-facing arrows is not a thing. When I googled "prev button" and did an image search, there were lots of single arrows, some double arrows, and precisely no triple arrows. Also, I've never seen a PREV button in my life. Unless you count this — |< —that is, vertical line followed by left arrow, which I think of as "go back to the PREVious track or PREVious chapter in your Blu-Ray or DVD." Constructors used to just cop to the fact that they were using a bad abbr. for "Before," but the last two clues have tried to work this remote button angle, and it's terrible. A garbage answer in an already half-garbagey section of the grid. Again, I say, woof.


Bullets:

• 6D: Portuguese king (REI) — botched this one (REY)
• 12D: Leader of Kappa Lambda Mu? (IOTA) — "Leader" here = letter of Greek alphabet that precedes the sequence in the clue (that is, Kappa Lambda Mu is not, not my knowledge, a sorority)
• 43A: Tickle Me Elmo toymaker (TYCO) — me: "it's TYCO ... wait, that's the astronomer ... no, wait, that TYCHO Brahe ..."; also me: "They still make ... this toy??"
• 19A: This, in Spanish (ESTO) — absolutely my least favorite commonly accepted crossword answers are the one where the language being clued has gender but since ours doesn't, there's no way to tell which letter to put in the final slot. OTR-? EST-? Blargh. Not Spanish's fault. Just one of those ambiguous moments that always makes me sigh and makes my shoulders collapse a little in sadness while I'm solving. See also AM-M, which today I guessed very much wrong (4D: Switch on a clock radio). Nobody likes your little "radio" misdirection!!!!
• 62A: Pop sensation (IDOL) — hey, there's this great site dedicated to vintage paperback books called "Pop Sensation"; dude hasn't updated it in nearly a year but I hear he might be starting up again soon ... 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Wisecracking bear of film / WED 7-29-20 / Animal known scientifically as alces alces / Mobile device that debuted in 2016

Constructor: Amanda Chung and Karl Ni

Relative difficulty: Challenging (5 minutes-ish)

THEME: STRONG PASSWORD (49A: It may require letters, a number and a special character—as seen in 20-, 33- and 39-Across) — well, you don't actually "see" the numbers and letters as such, but you do see the words that represent them:

Theme answers:

• TWO PERCENT MILK (2% milk) (20A: Reduced-fat option)
• IPHONE SEVEN PLUS (iPhone 7+) (33A: Mobile device that debuted in 2016)
• ONE MICHELIN STAR (1 Michelin *) (?!) (39A: Highly sought-after restaurant rating)

Word of the Day: "TED" (6A: Wisecracking bear of film) —

Ted is a 2012 American comedy film directed by Seth MacFarlane and written by MacFarlane, Alec Sulkin, and Wellesley Wild. The film stars Mark Wahlberg and Mila Kunis, with Joel McHale and Giovanni Ribisi in supporting roles, with MacFarlane providing the voice and motion capture of the title character. The film tells the story of John Bennett, a Boston native whose childhood wish brings his teddy bear friend Ted to life. However, in adulthood, Ted prevents John and his love interest Lori Collins from moving on with their lives. // The film is MacFarlane's feature-length directorial debut, produced by Media Rights Capital and distributed by Universal Pictures. It was the 12th highest-grossing film of 2012 and received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song. Ted received mixed to positive reviews with critics praising the humor and premise while criticizing the plot and inconsistent script.(wikipedia)

• • •

This had a lot of things working against it. I have to admire the ambition here—it's a weird concept, and it can't have been easy to find themers that worked. I just did not like how it came out. TWO PERCENT MILK is fine, that's very much a thing, but IPHONE SEVEN PLUS is several flavors of yuck. First, like the puzzle doesn't shill Apple products enough—the weirdly specific product name just reeks of niche tech crud. How long ago was the IPHONE SEVEN PLUS anyway? Are we honestly expected to remember the different releases of iPhone and their variants going back ... I mean, this must be at least four generations now. I've had my iPhone 8 for 3 or 4 years now. Anyway, that really killed it for me, and then ONE MICHELIN STAR felt like very contrived phrasing. What's "highly sought-after" is *a* Michelin Star. Since there are ... more stars to be had, it seems so odd to say the "highly sought-after restaurant rating" is ONE as opposed to two or three MICHELIN STARs. Surely those ratings are even more highly sought-after. Something about ONE MICHELIN STAR just doesn't feel right as a stand-alone answer. I think it's that the other two themers, when you write them out the way you would normally, the way they appear in the wild, they actually contain a number and a symbol (see "Theme Answers," above), whereas you would never write out "1 Michelin *." Just bizarre. Also, the revealer, isn't exactly strong. When I am asked to choose passwords nowadays I am given strongness ratings that go well beyond merely "strong." This one just clunked in too many places. Plus there's some regrettable fill (e.g. IBANKER CONG OWOW), *and* the cluing felt harder than normal. Just hard to see the joy here.


I don't think I've had a worse start to a solve ... ever. At least not with a relatively easy puzzle. I had four wrong answers (at various points) *in the NW corner alone*. LEGOS not ATOMS (1A: Small building blocks). SIM not ATM (1D: ___ card). BEEP not TOOT (2D: Friendly honk). OUCH not OWOW (3D: "I'm in pain! I'm in pain!") (!?). No idea about sci. name of MOOSE (17A: Animal known scientifically as Alces alces). Don't think of MISO as a "seasoning" 94D: Traditional Japanese seasoning) That whole corner was just brutal for a Wednesday. And the NE corner wasn't much better. Had both DEALS and SALES before PACTS (which are far less handshake-specific, imho) (9A: Things finished with handshakes). Then had STICK ON before PASTE ON (awk) (9D: Affix with adhesive). Needed many crosses to get stuff like POTPIE (25A: Entree baked in a tin) and MOTELS (46A: Things often found near cloverleafs), which had really vague clues. Never got a rhythm (or, if I got one, it quickly ceased). Bottom half was definitely easier. but the general grind of solving was never alleviated by thematic pleasures or sparkly fill. It just missed me, this puzzle, at every level. I'm surprised, as I usually like work by this pair—as I'm sure I will again.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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