Indian P.M., 1991-96 / THU 8-27-26 / 2007 horror sequel / Check-in from a texter / Gesture also known as "spirit fingers" / Apt synonym for "wake-up call" / Totino's frozen food offering / Pre-Inca civilization known for its underground aqueducts and geoglyphs / Insects responsible for virtually all fig pollination / "Sesame Street" character with a pet rock named Rocco

Constructor: Zachary David Levy

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: ZZ TOP (28D: 2004 inductees into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ... and a hint to 3-, 10-, 29- and 33-Down) — four Down answers have their "ZZ"s float to the "TOP" (i.e. front) of the answer:

Theme answers:

• ZZBU ALDRIN (3D: Astronaut for whom a Pixar character [Buzz Lightyear] is named) ("Buzz Aldrin")
• ZZJA HANDS (33D: Gesture also known as "spirit fingers") ("jazz hands")
• ZZPIA ROLL (10D: Totino's frozen food offering) ("pizza roll")
• ZZZZFUY-WUY (29D: Bear of children's rhyme) ("Fuzzy-Wuzzy")

Word of the Day: NAZCA (14A: Pre-Inca civilization known for its underground aqueducts and geoglyphs) —

The Nazca culture (also Nasca) was the archaeological culture that flourished from c. 100 BC to 800 AD beside the arid, southern coast of Peru in the river valleys of the Rio Grande de Nazca drainage and the Ica Valley. Strongly influenced by the preceding Paracas culture, who are known for their extremely complex textiles, the Nazca produced an array of crafts and technologies such as ceramics, textiles, and geoglyphs.

They are known for two extensive construction projects that would have required the coordination of large groups of laborers: the Nazca lines, immense designs in the desert whose purpose is unknown, and puquios, underground aqueducts for providing water for irrigation and domestic purposes in the arid environment, several dozen of which still function today. The Nazca Province in the Ica Region was named for this people. (wikipedia)

• • •

Took me far too long to cotton on to the theme, largely because I blew right through ZZ TOP without realizing it was a revealer. My eyes must've just picked up the first, definitional part of the clue, and not noticed that the clue went on to that whole later "... and a hint ..." part. Had a "Z" in place, saw "inductees" and "Rock & Roll Hall of Fame" and knew instantly what the answer was. But yeah, missed that it was trying to tell me anything about how the theme worked. Honestly didn't notice that that's what it was doing until I had finished the whole thing. Two things about this theme: one, we get gibberish. The thing about ZZ TOP is that its "Z"s are already, naturally at the top, so that answer is non-gibberish. But with the others, you just end up with a pile of nonsense at the top of your answer. Also, I know that ZZZZFUY-WUY (man that is hard to type / look at) is supposed to be the show-stopper, what with its double double-"Z" but ... the theme is ZZ TOP, not ZZZZ TOP. That answer feels anomalous in another way as well, since the "ZZ"s in the other themers float to the top of their first word, i.e. they remain attached to the word that they were originally a part of (e.g. BUZZ -> ZZBU) but the "ZZ"s in WUZZY have to jump all the way to the top of the answer, leaving poor "WUY" down there, both stupid-looking and "ZZ"-less. It was semi-satisfying to figure out this theme (esp. w/o the help of the revealer), but the result looks ugly, and the overall solve felt sloggish. Lots of names, lots of 3-letter answers, lots of 3-letter names. Kinda fussy (wussy) and unpleasant. HOW R U? SOG? AT BAR? SAW IV? These answers are not exactly sending me.

That opening NW corner was brutal for me. Nothing. I had nothing. Nothing but PARDO! (5D: Longtime "Saturday Night Live" announcer Don). I had zero idea who the NAZCA were, despite seeing the name (I now remember) once before in the crossword, in the answer NAZCA LINES ("Word of the Day," April 20, 2024). Looks like NAZCA also appears on its own last year (though again as part of the phrase NAZCA Lines). Weird that this ancient civilization only started showing up in crossword puzzles in the 2020s. I guess xword archaeologists discovered them and then discovered that that letter pattern was useful. Anyway, a whiff from me. I also whiffed on UNZIP because of that "?" clue (1A: Open with one's teeth?). I wanted SMILE (!?!?!). I thought [Currently being tried] meant [Currently being sampled or tested], not [Currently being on trial], so AT BAR (aside from being simply an ugly phrase) was a no-hoper. That NATO clue wasn't specific enough for me to see it (2D: Allied grp.). Not really sure about UNAS until I (eventually) got a letter or two (1D: Some, in León). The other real sticking point came in and around and directly on top of SOG, a non-word that people non-use. SOP is so much the better answer there, but since I'd never heard of a -IPABYTE, I didn't write that "P" in, though I was fully prepared for it to somehow be correct. SOG. People say "moist" is a disgusting-sounding word, but have they met SOG? Things can be SOGgy. But to SOG something? Just say "soak," if only so that people will know what the hell you're talking about. 

Had no idea what was going on with this theme for a while, as I say. I knew that the Totino's offering should be a PIZZA ROLL, but IMAGE would've had to become ZMAGE, so ... I was really shrugging up there. Plus the clue on EYE-OPENER was really inscrutable to me, so I just couldn't get into that top section (18A: Apt synonym for "wake-up call"—I was thinking of actual wake-up calls (like the kind you (used to?) ask for at hotels and going ".... they have synonyms for that?"). It was ZZZZFUYWUY (oof) that finally got me the theme. "I know it's FUZZY-WUZZY so ... wuzzup with these "Z"s?" Somehow it became clear. After that, other themers zipped into place. 

[... not to be confused with this guy, ZZFOIE BEAR]

Bullets:

• 42A: Daughter of Saturn, in Roman myth (JUNO) — I spent much of yesterday's class on the Aeneid talking about her (she's the divine antagonist of that story) and still her name didn't come to me immediately here. I guess I don't think about her lineage enough (?). So I thought of her but really worked the crosses to make sure she was, in fact, the correct four-letter goddess in question. 
• 60D: Clumsy vessel (ARK) — ??? "Clumsy" Tell that to NOAH (btw how were those answers not cross-referenced!?)
• 61D: Bygone cousin of a kiwi (MOA) — both MOA and kiwi belong to an infraclass of birds called "paleognaths"—basically all your flightless birds are part of this group (kiwi, cassowary, ostrich, emu, rhea—the ratites) as well as one flying bird, the tinamou, a Central and South American bird that has appeared in the NYTXW eight times (!?) but not a single time since 1982. Bring back the TINAMOU! There are 46 species! Although, wikipedia is telling me they are "shy and secretive" birds, so maybe they don't want the limelight.
• 59A: Be a rat (NAME NAMES) — this puzzle names a lot of them. JLO APU ENO ALI RAO ZOE ZSA(-Zsa) ... and those are just the three-letter ones. 
• 33D: Gestures also known as "spirit fingers" (ZZJA HANDS) — wow, RIP "spirit fingers," who says this now? This is the first I'm hearing the term at all. Whereas "jazz hands" ... was immortalized ... 

• 46A: Colombian offerings that may be served with hogao (AREPAS) — love AREPAS, but have absolutely no idea what "hogao" is. Probably should've made it my word of the Day, so we'll just call it a bonus "Word of the Day": 

Hogao is a variant of Spanish sofrito and is typically used in Colombian cuisine. It is traditionally made with only long green onions and tomatoes, differing from guiso, which can also be made with round onions, garlic, cumin, salt, and pepper that are sauteed over low heat during the cooking process. It is used for meats, arepas, rice, and other dishes, and can complement the famous bandeja paisa. The ingredients and naming tradition varies from region to region, though it is originally from Antioquia and the region whose people are known as paisa. Its name comes from the old use of the verbs ahogar and rehogar that reference a slow cooking technique." (wikipedia)

R.I.P. to ZZ TOP drummer Frank Beard, who died last week at the age of 77

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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So-called "Island of a Thousand Temples" / SAT 8-1-26 / Field whose prospects are looking up? / Menopause treatment option, in brief / Upset tummy, medically speaking / Source of some classic rock bands / Dials down / Sewerage, for example / A little of this and that

Constructor: Zachary David Levy

Relative difficulty: Medium-Hard

THEME: None

Word of the Day: TILSIT (6D: Cheese names after a Prussian town near the Baltic coast) —

Tilsit cheese or Tilsiter cheese is a pale yellow semihard smear-ripened^[2] cheese, created in the mid-19th century by Prussian-Swiss settlers, the Westphal family, from the Emmental valley. The original buildings from the cheese plant still exist in Sovetsk, Russia, formerly Tilsit, on the Neman River, in the former German province of East Prussia.^[3]

• • •

Hi friends! It's Rafa here back as a Rexplacement. I hope you enjoyed my puzzle yesterday! And if you didn't and you were relieved you were done with me, then ... I have bad news for you because here I am again. You can't quite get away from me just yet. But we are here to about the Saturday puzzle, so let's get into it.

Unfortunately I did not think that this puzzle was AMAZEBALLS ... it felt like more of a big flop, to stick with the modern parlance. For starters, I had KAMA SUTRA in my puzzle *checks notes* yesterday! It felt weird to have the same memorable long entry in back-to-back days, though of course that's more of an editorial concern than a construction concern. I wonder if it was intentional to run these puzzles back-to-back. Some people will appreciate the callback, others will be annoyed. Let me know what you think!

This is what an obelus (pl. OBELI) looks like

My issues are mostly with the rest of the fill. ABRUPTNESS and ANTEDATED in a 70-word themeless in the year 2026?! Not to mention the MET PAYROLL (fine, but I've only ever seen "made payroll") / DYSPEPSIA stack. And so much missed opportunity for more fun entries in the mid-length slots: LESSENS, UTILITY, RIVERAS. A plural name! Sure, it's a bit better when it's an artist but still ... not my favorite. GARGANTUA has big Saturday energy. Not the kind of entry I gravitate toward, but kinda cool to learn the origin of the word "gargantuan." I also have no idea who SUSAN LUCCI is, but that may be a me issue!

This is me providing evidence for my claims!

At least, the shorter entries were mostly clean. OBELI feels kinda clunky, something you would see in a crossword 20 years ago. Though my apologies to the writers / editors who felt seen by it. APBS is a pet peeve of mine, as I've never seen it outside of a crossword in my life. (I know it's a thing, just feels weird how much I see it in crosswords. I'm sure I've put it in a puzzle, too. Actually, yes, February 6th 2026 -- a NYT puzzle I made with APB. Look, I never said I was perfect.)

And all that meh ... for what? The 15s don't feel that special. DIA DE LOS MUERTOS is great and fun and worthy of crossword representation but I feel like I've seen it several times in crosswords already, so it didn't feel fresh. And CORONATION ROBES gets a big shrug from me. AMAZEBALLS is the kind of thing that was super in-the-language a while ago but nobody really says anymore. The puzzle just felt like a was waiting for some payoff that never came.

The APSE referenced in the clue

Okay, I'll say nice things now!!! The [Dis/cuss?] clue at 1-Across for TRASH TALK was a banger. I also liked [Red light district?] for DANGER ZONE. [Base unit] is a sneaky good clue for the pedestrian entry COT. [Wear the same clothes, in slang] is a lovely modern verb angle for TWIN. That's about all I have! I hope you all enjoyed this way more than I did ... I think I'm just in a grumpy mood today!

Oh, one more thing. (I guess this is a reverse feedback sandwich where I say the nice thing in the middle in between the critical things! Sorry!) SUSAN LUCCI felt like a Natick minefield. I had SUB instead on SUN for a while (admittedly not a basketball connoisseur over here), and TILSIT has impossible-to-infer letters. Plus the choice of cluing DOT as [Hwy. overseer, for short] meant that crossing was tricky, too.

 

Bullets:

• 46A: DISHY [Full of hot gossip] — I've never heard "dishy" as a word, but I guess it works!
• 48D: CABOS [Los ___ (Mexican tourist destination)] — I've been to Los Cabos once. It was really nice!
• 35A: IRANIAN [Like the 2003 Peace Nobelist Shirin Ebadi] — Was nice to see IRANIAN in the puzzle since it feels like the way less-common variant IRANI should up a lot more in crosswords
• 18D: ELK [Bugling game] — Took me a long while to figure out that game here meant animal.

Signed, Rafa

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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E-card site with a reduplicative name / FRI 3-27-26 / Reductive neologism for a strong female lead / Epithet for Bill Clinton / George's computer friend on "The Jetsons" / PB&J, e.g., informally / Dish whose name means "barley" in Italian / Direction in many a spaghetti western / Figure in Greek mythology who was brought up by a bear / Like 97% of the United States, per the Census Bureau / Dwarf planet in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter / Affliction known as "cold neuralgia" / Tahoe runner

Constructor: Zachary David Levy

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none

Word of the Day: R.U.D.I. (53D: George's computer friend on "The Jetsons") —

R.U.D.I. (voiced by Don Messick) is George's work computer as well as his best friend in the workplace. R.U.D.I. is sentient, free thinking and openly fond of George, recognizing his value as an employee and friend. His name is an acronym for Referential Universal Digital Indexer. He has a human personality and is a member of the Society Preventing Cruelty to Humans. Though capable and loyal, R.U.D.I. is implied to be antiquated technology, as George mentions his model is no longer made.

In the episode "Family Fallout", the Jetsons are up against the Spacelys on a game show. The last question to come up was "what does R.U.D.I. stand for?" George's response was Referential Universal Differential Indexer – this was accepted by the game show host as the correct answer, even though earlier episodes had it as Digital instead of Differential. (wikipedia)

• • •

I think it's best if I just rate this three stars and call its difficulty "Medium" because I am in no condition to make clear-headed judgments. I'm about 18 hours out from my second shingles shot and I feel pretty terrible. Low-level flu-ish. I did not enjoy solving this puzzle very much, but it seems more than possible that my mild feverishness, poor sleep, and resulting brain fog had something to do with that. So I'll try to keep it mostly just descriptive today ... though there is some stuff I'm pretty sure I'd've disliked even if I were feeling 100%. Things I'd rather never think about like BUBBA and TSA and anthropomorphized computer "friends"—and obscure ones, at that—the idea that anyone in the year 2026 should be familiar with the Jetsons universe to that extent is an absurdity. I thought the clue at 53D: George's computer friend on "The Jetsons" (R.U.D.I.) was talking about their robot maid, ROSIE, and the fact that I know ROSIE is itself a minor miracle considering that show aired before I was born—well, the first season, anyway; there were later seasons (2) when I was a teenager (1985-87), but I was not aware of them. R.U.D.I. was the worst of the proper nouns, for me, but I definitely resented having to know JIB-JAB (I have never visited an "E-card site" in my life and am never going to—people still "send" these impersonal things??) (1D: E-card site with a reduplicative name). NFL coaches, esp. their first names, there's just no way. I do not care. [Some guy's first name] may as well have been the clue for DAN (56D: N.F.L. coach Quinn). The clue doesn't even tell you the team he coaches. It's a really underwritten clue; we don't even learn any potentially interesting trivia. Meh. 

I had trouble getting started with this one, and then some trouble down below (where so many of the proper nouns are), and otherwise not much trouble at all. Worked my way into the NW corner via FEN / OFFS / SANYO / STENO (crosswordese to the rescue!), but I doubted FEN because it gave me what seemed like awkward letter sequences ("EF" "NF"). And so I put BOG in that position for a bit (resulting in "OF" instead of "EF" in 15-Across ... "OF" is of course a standalone word, so I was like "that's probably it, it's probably BOG / ...OF..." No). The clue on RURAL took me every single cross (7D: Like 97% of the United States, per the Census Bureau)—like, I was looking at -URAL going "... AURAL?" The clue is talking about the U.S. as a geographical entity; when you put "Census Bureau" in the clue, I assume you are talking about people. Yeesh. Saying the U.S. is 97% rural sounds like some right-wing propaganda, like when they show you how much of the country voted "red" using a physical map instead of numbers of people (when land, of course, doesn't vote; people do). So bah to that clue for sure. I wrote in FARO (!?) before ORZO at 10D: Dish whose name means "barley" in Italian, which was dumb—I think it's FARRO with two "R"s, anyway. But after a lot of flailing, I got that corner sorted and ... moved on.

Why am I still writing? I need to go be on the couch with a mug of hot water watching old movies until I pass out. I'll end by saying I think the stack in the NW corner is great, and THATAWAY made me smile (maybe I'll watch an old western today...) (33D: Direction in many a spaghetti western). I do not believe in the phrase "ALL OK?" (22A: "Do we have a problem here?"). Like, at all. Cannot hear it. "YOU OK?" I can def hear. "ALL GOOD?" I can kinda hear. "EVERYTHING OK?," sure. "ALL OK?," no. No. The one other answer that made me shake my head impatiently was ARGUED A CASE, which is as paradigmatic an EAT A SANDWICH answer as you're ever going to see ... but then I laughed out loud when that answer actually crossed SAMMICH (!), so maybe the puzzle is doing some kind of meta performance art there. Points for making it weird, puzzle.

Bullets:

• 24A: L.A. subdivision? (LOS) — self-referential. The clue is referring to "L.A." One "subdivision" is LOS, the other is ANGELES. 
• 13D: Reductive neologism for a strong female lead (GIRL BOSS) — oof. This concept. The clue seems to know that it's "reductive" so why is it in the grid at all? GIRL BOSS feminism reinforces gender stereotypes and perpetuates a toxic hustle culture, ugh. The very idea that it's remarkable for a "girl" to be a "boss" is also ... I dunno. A problem, I'd say. Many feminists have written articles critiquing the #GirlBoss phenomenon in the 15 or so years since it first blew up. But the critique isn't only coming from feminists: "In our pursuit of progress and equality, it's vital to understand that the core of our conversations should transcend gendered limitations. The goal isn’t to shift from one catchy hashtag to another, but to reframe our collective mindset, ensuring that aspirations and trends truly represent and resonate with all" (that's Forbes for god's sake). 
• 40D: PB&J, e.g., informally (SAMMICH) — me: "so PB&J ... is formal now?" Also me: "... SAMMIES?" (I hear sandwiches called "sammies" way more often than I hear them called "SAMMICHes").
• 23D: "Squid Game" and "The Red Sleeve" for two (K-DRAMAS) — these are just Korean dramas. Pretty straightforward.
• 29A: One whose work is barely seen? (EROTIC ARTIST)—not really sure what this is. Is it a stripper? A painter? Cartoonist? I got the EROTIC part easily enough, but the ARTIST was less intuitive.

• 14D: Figure in Greek mythology who was brought up by a bear (ATALANTA) — I know her name because it appears in a Donne poem ("Elegy XIX: To His Mistress Going to Bed"), but otherwise, I honestly know very little about her. She was a "swift-footed huntress" who as a child had been left to die by her father but was "suckled by a she-bear," as was the style of the time. She offered to marry whoever could beat her in a foot race and so Hippomenes got some golden apples from Aphrodite and threw them on the ground, and ATALANTA stopped mid-race to pick them up, and so Hippomenes won the race. "Atalanta and her husband, overcome with passion, made love in a shrine of the goddess Cybele (or of Zeus), for which they were turned into lions" (Britannica). So she had a colorful life.

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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Texter's "shrug" / TUE 6-10-25 / Model train track standard / Georges who wrote "Life: A User's Manual" / 2016 subject that dominated U.K. newspapers / Steak ___ (dish flambéed tableside) / Common name for NaOH

Constructor: Zachary David Levy

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium 

THEME: "GOOD CALL!" (38A: "You predicted that correctly" ... or what the ends of 18-, 24-, 48- and 57-Across will yield) — a cellphone puzzle—the ends of the theme answers are you need to make a (good) phone call:

Theme answers:

• KARAOKE BARS (18A: Places where nonprofessionals sing)
• STREAMING SERVICE (24A: Netflix or Hulu)
• WEDDING RECEPTION (48A: Occasion for toasts)
• MIXED SIGNAL (57A: Nodding yes while saying no, e.g.) 

Word of the Day: Georges PEREC (13D: Georges who wrote "Life: A User's Manual") —

Georges Perec (French: [ʒɔʁʒ peʁɛk]; 7 March 1936 – 3 March 1982) was a French novelist, filmmaker, documentalist, and essayist. He was a member of the Oulipo group. His father died as a soldier early in the Second World War and his mother was killed in the Holocaust. Many of his works deal with absence, loss, and identity, often through word play. [...] Perec is noted for his constrained writing. His 300-page novel La disparition (1969) is a lipogram, written with natural sentence structure and correct grammar, but using only words that do not contain the letter "e". It has been translated into English by Gilbert Adair under the title A Void (1994). His novella Les revenentes (1972) is a complementary univocalic piece in which the letter "e" is the only vowel used. This constraint affects even the title, which would conventionally be spelt Revenantes. An English translation by Ian Monk was published in 1996 as The Exeter Text: Jewels, Secrets, Sex in the collection Three. It has been remarked by Jacques Roubaud that these two novels draw words from two disjoint sets of the French language, and that a third novel would be possible, made from the words not used so far (those containing both "e" and a vowel other than "e"). // W ou le souvenir d'enfance, (W, or the Memory of Childhood, 1975) is a semi-autobiographical work that is hard to classify. Two alternating narratives make up the volume: The first is a fictional outline of a remote island country called "W", which at first appears to be a utopian society modelled on the Olympic ideal but is gradually exposed as a horrifying, totalitarian prison much like a concentration camp. The second is a description of Perec's childhood during and after World War II. Both narratives converge towards the end, highlighting the common theme of the Holocaust. // "Cantatrix sopranica L. Scientific Papers" is a spoof scientific paper detailing experiments on the "yelling reaction" provoked in sopranos by pelting them with rotten tomatoes. All references in the paper are multi-lingual puns and jokes; e.g., "(Karybb & Szyla, 1973)" [ed: I think that's a play on "Scylla & Charybdis," but I'm not sure]. (wikipedia)

 Life: A User's Manual (original title La Vie mode d'emploi) is Georges Perec's most famous novel, published in 1978, first translated into English by David Bellos in 1987. Its title page describes it as "novels", in the plural, the reasons for which become apparent on reading. Some critics have cited the work as an example of postmodern fiction, but Perec preferred to avoid labels and his only long-term affiliation with any movement was with the Oulipo or OUvroir de LIttérature POtentielle.

La Vie mode d'emploi features many interwoven stories and ideas as well as literary and historical allusions. It is based on the lives of the inhabitants of a fictitious Parisian apartment block, 11 rue Simon-Crubellier. It was written according to a complex plan of writing constraints, and is primarily constructed from several elements, each adding a layer of complexity. (wikipedia)

• • •

The theme holds together, but barely. BARS *indicate* a SIGNAL (i.e. RECEPTION, SERVICE), they aren't the SIGNAL itself. But I think the equivalency is close enough. Some of these answers (e.g. KARAOKE BARS) really change the meaning of the last word, i.e. take it into non-phone territory; but STREAMING SERVICE doesn't do this nearly as strongly. The best themers, with this type of theme, are going to radically recontextualize the thematic part of the answer, and STREAMING SERVICE keeps us too close to the whole "phone" context (in the people definitely stream those apps (Netflix, Hulu) on their phones. But this too is kind of a minor issue. The only major issue for me today, theme-wise, was MIXED SIGNAL, specifically its singularity??? The phrase is "MIXED SIGNALS." Plural. Always plural. You cannot mix a single thing. MIXED NUT? Who ever heard of that? Sure, there's MIXED BAG, but in that case, you aren't mixing multiple bags, you're mixing the contents of the bag, whereas MIXED SIGNALS always involves signals, plural. The clue itself contains multiple signals (plural!)—nodding yes + saying no. The fact that those actions are happening simultaneously doesn't make them any less two discrete signals (plural!). Hard wince at MIXED SIGNAL. But otherwise, I thought the theme was fine.

The fill, however, felt less fine. It's weird the kind of hard "nope" reaction whenever I see LEONA Lewis (especially hot on the heels of NIA Long). LEONA is not just crosswordese, it's like a harbinger of crosswordese to come. I feel like she had a moment of fame that's now about 15-20 years old (huge debut album in '07, but no albums at all since '15), but while her fame was not sustained, her crossword fame will not die. I don't think she's bad fill, but let's just say that when the puzzle hit me with stuff like O-GAUGE and PEREC (and ERROL and ARA and ENOS and TONYA etc.) immediately after LEONA, well, I wasn't *that* surprised. Much (much much) more obscure today is PEREC. I've seen PEREC dozens of times over the years, but most of those dozens were dozens of years ago, when puzzles were harder to fill (i.e. Before Software) and terminal-C five-letter words were harder to navigate. Puzzle people (some puzzle people, that is) have a thing for PEREC because of the whole wordplay element of his work (see "Word of the Day," above). I was surprised to find (just now) that his name didn't debut in the NYTXW until 2001, nearly two decades after he died. If he were that big, you'd think Weng or Maleska-era puzzles would've snatched him up. Today is PEREC's 12th appearance, with nine of those appearances coming before 2015, so if you haven't seen him before (particularly if you're new to crosswords or on the younger side or both), I'm not that surprised. I don't think he's an early-week answer at all. He's just not that famous. LEONA Lewis looks like Taylor Swift next to Georges PEREC. This is only the second time PEREC has appeared on Tuesday. He debuted on a Friday, in a puzzle by the notoriously brutal (complimentary) Bob Klahn. Anyway, by the time I got to the bottom of the grid and encountered FLAM, EENIE, TEHEE, etc. I felt like the LEONA Prophecy had been fulfilled. Despite the snazzy "Z"s, the grid really leaned sludgeward.

Still, it was definitely Tuesday-easy, overall, for me. The hardest part was the SW, where a series of errors held me up for a bit. The most insane of those errors was writing in BIG DIG instead of BREXIT (46D: 2016 subject that dominated U.K. newspapers). So many things had to happen for me to make that (again, insane) error, the first of which is that I had to write in "LEGGO!" instead of "LET GO!" at 66A: "Unhand me!". That gave me an -IG at the end of the answer. Since I took ZOO ANIMAL down to LEGGO, I didn't yet have either of the last two themers, either of which would've prevented me from making my admittedly insane mistake. What was I thinking with BIG DIG?! (which I think was the name for Boston's extremely long infrastructure project... yes: 25 years!). Well, what I was thinking was a movie I saw a few years back on Netflix about an archaeological dig ... maybe it was called THE DIG (??). It was! And it was about the excavation at Sutton Hoo (a hugely important archaeological moment for Anglo-Saxon historians). Only ... the excavation of Sutton Hoo took place ca. 1939, not 2016, so, again, insanity that I just went ahead with BIG DIG. More insanity that the "B" ended up checking out! Seems like the "B" should've led me into the mistake, but no—the "B" only hardened my preexisting mistake. Sigh. Other mistakes down there included "GOT ME!?" for "GOT IT!?" (38D: "Catch my drift?") and SNOW TIRE for REAR TIRE (54A: It helps give a car traction). How does a REAR TIRE help give a car traction any more than a front tire does? Aren't most cars front-wheel drive now (if not all-wheel drive)? That REAR TIRE clue was ... not helpful.


Bullets:

• 15A: Steak ___ (dish flambéed tableside) (DIANE) — like LEONA Lewis, Georges PEREC, and rear-wheel drive cars, this answer feels like it's from another era. Like ... from a restaurant in a movie from the 1930s. Aha,  yes! I was close. Off by a decade, but ...

Steak Diane is a dish of pan-fried beefsteak with a sauce made from the seasoned pan juices. It was originally cooked tableside and sometimes flambéed. It was most likely invented in London in the 1930s. From the 1940s through the 1960s it was a standard dish in "Continental cuisine", and is now considered retro. (wikipedia) [my emphasis]

 

• 1A: Info acquired by scouts (INTEL) — so just ... [Info], then. Scouts? I guess. But I was looking for something much more sports-specific. Like ... STATS or something.
• 33A: Was verklempt (PLOTZED) — did not know these were synonyms. I think of being verklempt as merely tearing up or getting choked up, whereas I think of plotzing as more ... dramatic. Being overwhelmed. Literally, it means "keeling over."
• 1D: Texter's "shrug" (IDK) — stands for "I don't know. Pretty common. And yet my fingers still typed in SMH. Why? IDK!!! Force of habit. Shrugging My sHoulders?? 

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

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