Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle: Zachary Edward-Brown

Constructor: Zachary Edward-Brown and John Kugelman

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: "Change Locations" — theme answers contain shaded squares that spell out the names of states, except for one circled square in each state name that is just ... wrong. Those "wrong" letters spell out "MISPLACED," and the whole theme is tied together by the revealer, ALTERED STATES (110A: 1980 horror film starring William Hurt ... or what the shaded squares contain?):

Theme answers:

"OOH, I'M SO SCARED" (21A: False alarm announcement?)
DENVER MINT (34A: Major coin producer)
MARS LANDER (37A: Viking I or II)
FLIP A HOUSE (47A: Remodel and resell some real estate)
DRUM LINES (49A: Marching band tempo setters)
"WHAT A HOOT!" (74A: "Hilarious!")
"NOT EXACTLY ..." (77A: "I mean, kind of ...")
"I OWE YOU ONE" (90A: "Much obliged")
GAINED A DAY (92A: Crossed the International Date Line from east to west, or west to east (depending on how you look at it))

Word of the Day: Gabe NEWELL (51D: Gaming mogul Gabe) —

Gabe Logan Newell (born November 3, 1962), also known by his nickname GabeN, is an American video game developer and businessman. He is the co-founder, president and majority owner of the video game company Valve Corporation.
Newell was born in Colorado and grew up in Davis, California. He attended Harvard University in the early 1980s but dropped out to join Microsoft, where he helped create the first versions of the Windows operating system. In 1996, he and Mike Harrington left Microsoft to found Valve and fund the development of their first game, Half-Life (1998). Harrington sold his stake in Valve to Newell and left in 2000. Newell led the development of Valve's digital distribution service, Steam, which launched in 2003 and controlled most of the market for downloaded PC games by 2011.
As of 2021, Newell owned at least one quarter of Valve; Forbes estimated that he owned at least half as of 2025. He is also the owner of the marine research organization Inkfish, the neuroscience company Starfish Neuroscience, and the custom yacht manufacturer Oceanco. Newell has been estimated as one of the wealthiest people in the United States and the wealthiest person in the video games industry, with an estimated net worth of $11 billion as of 2025. (wikipedia)

• • •

I guess locations are changed and states are altered, but why? For MISPLACED? But ... nothing is "misplaced." Misspelled, yes, but misplaced? Long, long way to go for an inapt spelled-out word. I enjoyed very little of this puzzle. The SW corner, the SICKBAY / POLEAXE / "I WANT IN" triad—that I liked. But otherwise the solving experience was largely unpleasant, due primarily to the extremely choppy grid. This thing is bullet-ridden with black squares, especially all through the middle. So most of the time I felt like I was hacking my way through short answer after short answer after short answer. And when you add to all those black squares all the shaded squares, and then the circled squares on top of that, the whole thing is a visual mess. It was fussy to navigate, and, stacked as it is with short stuff, there were very few highlights.

Some of the themers were great as standalone answers ("OOH, I'M SO SCARED!" Nice), but not one, not two, but three (!!!!!?) of them are ___ A ___ phrases. It's an EAT A SANDWICH extravaganza. FLIP A HOUSE, WHAT A HOOT!, GAINED A DAY, ugh. Actually, I'll let "WHAT A HOOT!" slide, since that's a coherent phrase. But still ... there just wasn't a ton to like. RFID? Somebody named ELISHA (sorry, not up on my Bell rivals / 19c. engineers) (42D: Engineer Gray who, arguably, invented the telephone — and battled Alexander Graham Bell over it in court for years). Somebody named NEWELL (who's clearly a big deal in his field, but to me ... ???). More Star Wars baloney (PADAWAN) (23A: Jedi-in-training). It really is tiresome how frequently the crossword goes to the Star Wars universe for answers. I've mostly heard of the answers—I literally have a Star Wars (1977) poster on my living room wall—but even I'm exhausted. You can give me OREOs and EELs all day long, but please put the brakes on Star Wars ffs. If you wanted to dial back Marvel (STORM) and Game of Thrones, that would also be OK with me! I knew STORM; I did not know AIDAN. But my knowing / not knowing isn't the point. It's the unimaginative return to the same wells over and over and over ... that's the point. I like the pivot to Severance, but even there, yeesh, PETEY!?!?! (40A: Nickname for Mark's unsevered best friend in "Severance"). That's a deep cut even for people (like me) who have seen every episode of that show. If you had to list the most important characters on Severance, PETEY wouldn't even make the top ten. I remember when the puzzle would ask me to know, like, the fourth most important character on Ally McBeal and that would make me mad. I wouldn't mind a little marginal pop culture now and then, but in a puzzle that's already drenched in pop culture ... I don't love it.

[The one and only ... makeup by Max Factor (seriously!)]

There's some wood I've never heard of (IRON WOOD??) and then GOAL NET? (43A: Football blocker?). At first I thought they meant "football" as in soccer, and the GOAL NET was just the ... net. The net in the goal. But now I think it's actually American Football that's being referred to here, and the GOAL NET is the thing that gets hoisted behind the goal posts to keep the football from, like, hitting the spectators or something? As you can see, I was desperate for anything to like today. I like ALTERED STATES! (the movie). That's something. But conceptually, I didn't think this worked well, and the grid and fill, no, they also didn't work for me.

I pretty much mentally noped out right away with this ... let's say, creative ... demonym:

I've had to suffer through UTAHN and UTAHAN and god knows how many other odd demonyms, but OAHUAN feels outerspaceian. PADAWAN looks like a more plausible demonym than OAHUAN. Is MAUIAN a thing? MAUWEGIAN? Needless to say, OAHUAN is a debut. My apologies to all the proud OAHUANs out there, but do you really call yourselves that? At least the puzzle spelled DURAG correctly today (87D: Hair-care item associated with Black culture). That's progress, of a sort. Twenty-two DORAG appearances before someone caught on that that's not how it's most commonly spelled or marketed (though the earliest dictionary defs do spell it DO-RAG). I expect DORAG will reappear some day, but for now, since 2020, it's DURAG (though this is only DURAG's second appearance, I'm surprised to find out).

Bullets:

4D: Touchless payment tech (RFID) — so ugly. By now, it's recognizable to me, but it's still ugly as hell, as abbrevs. go. And alongside OAHUAN, hoo boy.
39A: Astronaut Ochoa, the first Hispanic woman in space (ELLEN) — well there's a famous golfer named LORENA Ochoa, and somehow, between her and this astronaut Ochoa, my brain has managed to convince itself that all Ochoas are ELENAs. Really really thought ELENA Ochoa was right. It just sounds so right. But it's a mash-up of two different Ochoas. Perhaps by saying all this out loud, I will be able to disentangle the Ochoa Knot.
8D: Video game character with an endless appetite (PAC-MAN) — I guess he does just keep "eating" those dots or whatever, and yet I've never thought of him as being particularly hungry. Evading the damn ghosts and navigating the maze, that's what PAC-MAN does. Also, he's yellow, circular, has no legs, his girlfriend and son both have their own video games, etc. ... so many things I associate with PAC-MAN before "endless appetite." Wait, are PAC-MAN and Ms. PAC-MAN married? LOL, wikipedia just gave me the funniest sentence it's ever given me: "She was originally called Miss Pac-Man, though this was changed to avoid implying that she had her son out of wedlock."
32D: Word used 10 times in Roger Ebert's review of "North" (1994) ("HATED") — that's what's known as a callback (to this puzzle, which came out on my birthday)
78D: He had a Billboard Hot 100 hit with "Rubber Duckie" (ERNIE) — musically, Sesame Street was on point. Stevie Wonder's Sesame Street rendition of "Superstition" (the greatest song ever recorded) is rightly legendary. And just yesterday I was listening to a '70s playlist and I heard this Pointer Sisters tune that I swear I haven't heard since I was five. Absolute banger.

And let's just play the Stevie while we're at it. If these videos don't brighten up your day, I can't help you, man.

85D: Ren faire prop akin to a halberd (POLEAXE) — it was hilarious (to me) how fast my 1980s-D&D-playing ass plunked down POLEAXE here. Like, off the "P," and I'm not sure I even needed it. I don't know what D&D is like now, but at age 12 I can tell you I had an outsized medieval weaponry vocabulary. The fact that I know what a "halberd" is in the first place, I owe to hours and hours spent with weapons lists.
93D: Interview guest whom Ali G calls "my man Buzz Lightyear here" (ALDRIN) — I don't think I've ever actually watched a full ... episode? ... of Ali G's show. I know ALI G mainly from crosswords. I know ALDRIN primarily for uttering the immortal lines: "Careful! They're ruffled!"

Time once again for 🌲🐈Holiday Pet Pics🐕🌲. But first, please—I'm gonna put this in ALL CAPS today because yesterday's lowercase plea didn't seem to work: I CAN'T ACCEPT ANY MORE PET PICS THIS YEAR. I'm so happy to have so many great pics, but there just aren't enough days in the holiday season ...

Alright, let's see who we've got today. Here's Felicity, who is very sweet but no you may not have her candy cane pillow get your own.

[Thanks, Jordan!]

Maddie is a young Havanese. It doesn't snow in Havana, so naturally, for Ohio winters, she needs a little coat.

[thanks, Isaac!]

Musical interlude now—hit it, Urbie!

["O holy night, / The stars are brightly shiiiiiiiiiiining / It's is the night / When you give / Urbie treeeeeats!"]
[Thanks, Angela!]

Mel here has Resting Mean Face (RMF), but I'm assured she is a sweet and happy little cat who loves Christmas. Same, Mel. Same.

[Thanks, Jenny]

This is Malcolm. Malcolm likes carpets. Malcolm is a carpet. Malcolm has killed the traditional Christmas badger-raccoon-squirrel, so the holidays have officially begun!

[Thanks, Steve!]

And lastly ... whoa! Haven't seen one of these before. What kind of dog is this!?!?

[This is Atherton the Barn Princess, and I'm told that she's a "horse"]
[Thanks, Pat & Emma]

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Peter Gordon's Fireball Newsflash Crosswords is gearing up for another year. You get one puzzle every 2-3 weeks, delivered straight to your Inbox. Puzzles are true to their name—geared toward the headlines. They are a great way to keep up with names and events in the news—very topical. I'd say they are roughly Wednesday level in difficulty. Very doable, but with a lot of bite to make them interesting. Peter is an established constructor and editor, one of the best in the business. These puzzles are highly recommended. Subscribe here, now!

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