Monodrama that debuted in 1989 / FRI 8-14-26 / Average Joe, in modern slang / Couple's last coupling, perhaps / Shimmer colorfully / Purple drink ingredient at a boba tea shop / Mounted warrior skilled in martial arts / Costco competitor, informally / Issue in a modern remote work setting / Enthusiastic cry when one's favorite song comes on the radio

Constructor: Zhou Zhang

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: King Khufu (1A: ___ Plateau, home to the tomb of King Khufu) —

Khufu, or Cheops, was the second pharaoh of the Fourth Dynasty of Egypt, reigning during the 26th century BC in the early Old Kingdom period. Khufu succeeded his father, Sneferu, as king. He is generally accepted as having commissioned the Great Pyramid of Giza, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, but many other aspects of his reign are poorly documented. Khufu is also the main character noted in the Westcar Papyrus from the 13th dynasty.

The only completely preserved portrait of the king is a small ivory figurine found in a temple ruin of a later period at Abydos in 1903. All other reliefs and statues were found in fragments, and many buildings of Khufu are lost. Khufu has a conflicting legacy: while the king enjoyed a long-lasting cultural heritage preservation during the period of the Old Kingdom and the New Kingdom, the ancient historians Manetho, Diodorus and Herodotus hand down a very negative depiction of Khufu's character. As a result, an obscure and critical picture of Khufu's personality persists. (wikipedia)

• • •

This was delightful ... mostly. GO SPLAT really went splat, mostly because it doubles up the "GO" from GO LOCO—which also went splat, at least in my ear (really wanted "NUTS," which sounds more ... I dunno, right) (29A: Completely lose it). Not sure why the three "ON"s ("I MEAN, COME ON!," TRY ON, "I'M ON!") don't bother me nearly as much as the two "GO"s. I think it's because the "GO"s occupy the same place in their phrase structures, so the duplication really stands out ... but then the "ON"s all come at the end of their respective phrases, so maybe it's just being up front that makes the "GO"s stand out (badly). Anyway, the dupes were the one technical thing that seemed off today. Otherwise, I found the puzzle overwhelmingly enjoyable. There was something funny about the exasperation on display in the NW. "Another online meeting!? Seriously?! I MEAN, COME ON! I have ZOOM FATIGUE!" I haven't had ZOOM FATIGUE since I was teaching completely online during the pandemic. Nothing made me miss physically going to work like infinite Zoom. I appreciate the juxtaposition of long answers in that corner. ZOOM FATIGUE is real and it sucks, and the adjacent answer knows it. 

[Michigan's own Bob SEGER]

I'm always embarrassed when my first foothold in a puzzle is some piece of crosswordese that comes to me instinctively solely because I've been solving crosswords for a million years. As I've said before, feels like cheating. Today, it happened again, this time with CASCA (30D: "Julius Caesar" role). I've read Julius Caesar a few times, but if it weren't for crosswords, I don't think the name CASCA would've stuck, and now it's a reflex. TRU is another good example of ye olde fill that is often a reflex, but today it was hidden (to me) behind a word I don't really know: "Monodrama" (52D: Monodrama that debuted in 1989). Does this mean it has just one actor? A one-word title? One act? That it's one extended mono-logue? A monotonous drama? A drama about mononucleosis? [Consults dictionary] Ah, I see. My first guess was correct: "a drama acted or designed to be acted by a single person" (merriam-webster.com). TRU used to appear all the time in drama form. Now it's also a TV channel, or part of one (TRUTV). It's also a nickname for Truman Capote (whom the play TRU is about), and (apparently) a hotel chain. If the clue had mentioned Capote, I'd've gotten it instantly. As it was, I needed an assist from crosses. 

Always nice when you throw down a great long answer off of very little evidence and it ends up being right! Today, that answer was ...

BREAK-UP SEX! (17A: Couple's last coupling, perhaps). Perfect. Fresh and, uh, vivid, and very much in-the-language. I wanna say "that answer did not GO SPLAT," but in order to avoid all potential sexual implications, I'm not going to. I love CONFABULATE even though ... I swear, if you'd asked me before I started this puzzle if CONFABULATE was a real word, I'd've said "um ... maybe?" (24D: Shoot the breeze). Sounds kinda made up. like FRABJOUS, which I just now learned is considered a real word, even though Lewis Carroll did, in fact, make it up. CONFABULATE gives some real colloquial zing to the puzzle, and then we get to end with some sweet tunes: "THAT'S MY JAM!" (52A: Enthusiastic cry when one's favorite song comes on the radio). My only objection to this answer is really an objection to the clue, which more strongly suggests the answer "THIS IS MY JAM!" If I imagine someone in the car or in the club hearing a song they love, I imagine them saying "This!" This here song, the one we are currently hearing. If you're talking about a song, then sure, "That." But this is a technicality. The point is, everyone loves to hear their jam. Let's hear a jam now.

Bullets:

• 37A: Mom-and-pop group (FAM) — so ... not PTA then? Got it.
• 60D: Of an indefinitely large number (UMPTEENTH) — like CONFABULATE, this seemingly improvised fantasy word adds an enjoyable fizz to the grid.
• 6D: 365th out of 365, in brief (NYE) — every fourth year would like a word! (that word is "leap")
• 12D: Purple drink ingredient at a boba tea shop (UBE) — I first encountered UBE in some fancy chocolates. Thought, "that would make a good crossword word." And here we are: UBE's sixth appearance (as a yam) since 2023. Actually, it's the seventh appearance overall. UBE appeared as a [Philippine yam] in 1954, but then for 36 years (after one attempt to pass it off as a "var." of the Latin UBI (!?)), it was solely a Japanese seaport. Then, for 32 years, it disappeared from the grid entirely. But with the popularization of Asian food ingredients in America, it's back! Purple as ever!

[in ice cream form!]

• 43D: Average Joe, in modern slang (NORMIE) — I love this word, though I hear it most often used adjectivally, usually of someone's opinions. Sometimes, of my own opinions. It's got a slight pejorative tinge to it, but I just think of it as a cozy, slangy way of referring to general ordinariness.
• 32D: Plot device? (HOSE) — the one answer that didn't really make sense to me. You HOSE down ... a "plot" of land? Only when I thought of the phrase "garden plot" did the clue suddenly make (a kind of) sense.
• 35A: Huddling, as teammates (IN CLOSE) — can't say as I've ever heard this in a sports context, but physically, it makes sense. Still, it makes much more sense as a name for a talk show hosted by Glenn Close. Forget Charlie Rose—it's time for In Close with Glenn Close! Think about it, Glenn!

That's all for today. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Question during a brainstorming session / THU 7-16-26 / Alcohol, slangily / Feline in a 2000s meme / Symbol of spiritual insight, in Hinduism / Common garnish in a chirashi bowl / Galápagos island that was home to Lonesome George, the last tortoise of his subspecies / Music genre with "walking" bass lines / Business whose rewards program gives "Stackholder Perks"

Constructor: Zhou Zhang and Mallory Montgomery

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: "DOES THIS HAVE LEGS?" (61A: Question during a brainstorming session ... or of the answers to the starred clues) — theme answers are all the "THIS" in the question "DOES THIS HAVE LEGS?"; questions are all imagined replies to the question:

Theme answers:

• IRONMAN TRIATHLON (18A: *Yes—three arduous ones)
• MILLIPEDE (29A: *Yes—sometimes more than 1,000)
• DIRECT FLIGHT (37A: *Yes—exactly one, in common usage)
• YARDSTICK (50A: *No—but it does have three feet)

Word of the Day: PINTA (16A: Galápagos island that was home to Lonesome George, the last tortoise of his subspecies) —

Pinta Island (Spanish: Isla Pinta) is one of the Galápagos Islands in Ecuador, west of South America. Pinta has an area of 60 km² (23 sq mi) and a maximum altitude of 777 meters (2,549 ft). // The Spanish name Pinta—an adjective meaning "spotted"—honors the Pinta, the nickname of one of the three ships of Christopher Columbus's first voyage. Santa Maria Island is similarly named for another one of his vessels and Pinzón Island is partially named for the Pinta's captain Martín Alonso Pinzón. [...] Pinta was the original home to Lonesome George, perhaps the most famous tortoise in the Galápagos Islands. He was the last known representative of the subspecies Chelonoidis nigra abingdonii. The most northern major island in the Galápagos, at one time Isla Pinta had a thriving tortoise population. The island's vegetation was devastated over several decades by introduced feral goats, thus diminishing food supplies for the native tortoises. A prolonged effort to exterminate goats introduced to Pinta was completed in 1990, and the vegetation of the island is starting to return to its former state. (wikipedia)

• • •

I know the expression "to have legs," as in "to last," but I am not familiar with the brainstorming convention of asking the question "DOES THIS HAVE LEGS?" Perhaps I have not been in on a lot of brainstorming sessions. Almost certainly, yes, this is true. Is this a business-world thing? It's kind of redolent of businessspeak. Anyway, the revealer was kind of a let-down today, just because it meant very little to me as an expression. I do think there's something cute about the whole theme idea, especially the cluing premise. I was slower today than I should've been simply because I refused to jump down to the bottom and get the revealer first. I could tell it was gonna be one of those puzzles where starting at the end would make the rest of it much easier, but I decided to power through without breaking stride. I had to get all of IRONMAN TRIATHLON before I began to understand what the thing in question was, and it was only after I got MILLIPEDE that I knew that that thing was "leg." Sadly, I had written in GST instead of GMT at 24D: Clock-setting std. (Greenwich Mean Time), so I didn't have the "M" for MILLIPEDE, so the "leg"-ness of it all was slow in coming. I also had trouble understanding what the DIRECT FLIGHT clue was going for (37A: *Yes—exactly one, in common usage). The "in common usage" part really threw me. I had no idea what it was doing. I was looking for a common phrase in which someone spoke of one ... something. I still don't really understand why "in common usage" is necessary. Is DIRECT FLIGHT a slangy expression? Is there a different expression "in formal usage"? How is DIRECT FLIGHT a phrase that needs any kind of qualification?? The clue feels overwritten, which (for me) resulted in confusion. And not the good kind of confusion, either. Not the "whoa, you tricked me, good one" kind. The "this should've been clearer" kind. The puzzle gets some points off for using the same meaning of "leg" twice (with both IRONMAN TRIATHLON and DIRECT FLIGHT, the "leg" is a "segment"), but then it gets those points back for going with an inventive, unexpected "No" answer at YARDSTICK (50A: *No—but it does have three feet). The theme was creative, even if the revealer didn't really resonate with me.

The puzzle was on the easy side again, with only the themers providing any real resistance. If your time was a little slow, it's probably because of the oversized grid (16x15). I had one very real struggle point today, and it fittingly involved the one-word clue [Struggle] (8D). I wrote in STRIVE with total confidence and when almost every cross confirmed it, I kept it there. I just couldn't figure out why I couldn't come up with a good "V"-containing answer for 26A: Spoil. I ended up with DEVILE and every time I checked the crosses of DEVILE ... nope, no problems, everything checks out! I just stared at DEVILE like ... "well, you look like a word. You kind of sound like a word. How have I lived over a half a century and never heard of you, DEVILE?" I think the ambiguity of [Spoil] made matters (much) worse. "Spoil" as in "dote on"? "Spoil" as in "go bad"? Actually, neither of those things. "Spoil" as in "ruin, mar, desecrate," i.e. DEFILE. And it's STRIFE ... [Struggle] is a noun, not a verb. I just finished reading the first two books of Colson Whitehead's Harlem Trilogy, and much of it is set in an area of Harlem known colloquially as "Striver's Row": 

The St. Nicholas Historic District, known colloquially as "Striver's Row", is a historic district located on both sides of West 138th and West 139th Streets between Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard (Seventh Avenue) and Frederick Douglass Boulevard (Eighth Avenue), in the Harlem neighborhood of Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is both a national and a New York City historic district, and consists of row houses and associated buildings designed by three architectural firms and built in 1891–93 by developer David H. King Jr. These are collectively recognized as gems of New York City architecture, and "an outstanding example of late 19th-century urban design" [...] King sold very few houses and the development failed, with Equitable Life Assurance Society, which had financed the project, foreclosing on almost all the units in 1895, during an economic depression. By this time, Harlem was being abandoned by white New Yorkers, yet the company would not sell the King houses to blacks, and so they sat empty until 1919–20, when they were finally made available to African Americans for $8,000 each. Some of the units were turned into rooming houses, but generally they attracted both leaders of the black community and upwardly-mobile professionals, or "strivers", who gave the district its colloquial name.

Constant exposure to the name "Striver's Row" over the past couple weeks made the [Struggle] / STRIVE connection feel natural, obvious. So obvious that I'm going to go on pretending DEVILE is a word. It really wants to be a word. It's got an undeniable wordness about it. I think when you DEFILE something super duper bad, you DEVILE it. Yes, that will work.

What else? Oh, PINTA???? With that clue? LOL (Galápagos island that was home to Lonesome George, the last tortoise of his subspecies). I wrote in PALAU there at first and then thought "that ... wasn't a Galápagos island, was it? They let Survivor film in the Galápagos? That can't be right." Correct: that is not right. I guess you use this seemingly obscure clue to avoid mentioning Columbus? Except the island is named after Columbus's ship, so ... as far as avoiding colonizers, that doesn't really work. Maybe the puzzle was deemed too damn easy (not untrue) and so they put in this bit of interesting if depressing trivia about the last tortoise of his subspecies, who died all alone on a rock in the ocean because introduced feral goats destroyed his tortoise ecosystem. You can sneak in the odd bit of strange trivia here and there if all the crosses are fair, and these were. I don't see any other parts of the puzzle that gave me trouble, except for my initial and fairly trivial CHIC / CHI error (1A: Smart = POSH / 1D: Letter after upsilon = PHI).

Bullets:

• 31A: Patooties (BUTTS) — lol I really got turned around on this one, anatomically. Somehow I got the phrase "cutie patooties" and "tootsies" mashed up in my head and somehow convinced myself that "patooties" was a cutesy name for hands, i.e. MITTS. (I know “tootsies” are toes or feet, that was an important step on my associative journey to hands)
• 43A: Common garnish in a chirashi bowl (ROE) — yet another "bowl" I've never heard of. Throw it on the Bowl Pile with AÇAI and POKE and the rest. "Chirashi" means "scattered: "It’s a bed of sushi rice and ingredients “scattered” over the top in a decorative manner" (The Japanese Bar).

• 54A: Country that las islas Canarias are part of (ESPAÑA) — congrats to ESPAÑA on their World Cup semifinal victory over France. Also to Argentina on beating England yesterday. I missed the England / Argentina match because I was in Ithaca seeing The Invite (worth it—genuinely hilarious), but I saw the (beautiful) late goal by Argentina. Excited for the final. Sad the World Cup is winding down. I've grown used to having high-stakes soccer to watch every day, and to seeing colorfully dressed and extremely excited people cheering and crying. August is going to be boring. Am I going to have to get into Premier League? I swore I would not do this...
• 41D: Symbol of spiritual insight, in Hinduism (THIRD EYE) — I feel like Ed Norton's character in The Invite says something about opening his THIRD EYE. I know he talks about being "almost certified" at rolfing. There's something almost parodic about his character's New Agey / wellness / sexploration vibe, but he's so honest and earnest and open that he's hard to laugh at—he becomes something much more than a figure of derision. The movie steers in and around movie tropes very deftly. Mostly it just made me wheeze laughing at how accurate all the awkward "getting to know you / dinner party" dialogue was. And all the sex stuff. That, also, funny. 

• 9D: World's most populous Creole-speaking country (HAITI) — back-to-back HAITI days. I don't really have anything to say about this. Just noticed, is all.
• 12D: Feline in a 2000s meme (LOLCAT) — wikipedia tells me that an "Lolcat" is an "image macro of one or more cats." So it's not one "Feline" so much as an image of one or more felines, with "idiosyncratic and intentionally grammatically incorrect text [...] known as lolspeak" (wikipedia).

• 46D: Music genre with "walking" bass lines (SKA) — a walking bassline is: "A bassline composed of nonsyncopated notes of equal value, used in jazz and baroque music, for example." (wordnik)

That's all for today. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Citrus-based sauce in Japanese cuisine / WED 6-24-26 / Retro kind of hairstyle / Pinkglow pineapples and GloFish, for short / Marketing team's goal with a new product launch, informally / Hand-held radios used by the speakers of the italicized clues and their answers? / Important creatures in Inuit culture / Band whose spelled-out name translates to "Bulletproof Boy Scouts"

Constructor: Kevin Curry and Zhou Zhang

Relative difficulty: Medium (and then some?)

THEME: WALKIE-TALKIES (36A: Hand-held radios used by the speakers of the italicized clues and their answers?) — familiar phrases that contain walkie-talkie lingo, clued as if they were, in fact, responses on a walkie-talkie:

Theme answers:

• "JOLLY, ROGER!" (17A: "Sleigh's loaded and ready! How are you feeling, Santa?")
• "GLAZED, OVER!" (25A: "I'm at the bakery—what kind of doughnut do you want?")
  "CARBON, COPY!" (49A: "What's tomorrow's chemistry exam about again?")
• "CHICKEN, OUT!" (60A: "Before you go, what animal crosses the road in that old joke?")

Word of the Day: RAMONA Shelburne (46D: Sportswriter Shelburne) —

Ramona Leor Shelburne (born July 19, 1979) is an American sportswriter and NBA Insider for ESPN. She is also a former softball player; in high school, she was the 1997 L.A. City Softball Co-Player of the Year, and in college she played outfield for Stanford Cardinal for four years. [...] Prior to joining ESPN, Shelburne spent seven years at the Los Angeles Daily News as a reporter and columnist from 2002-2009. At ESPN, Ramona gained a national following writing about Frank and Jaime McCourt's divorce and the 2010-2011 Los Angeles Dodgers ownership dispute. On February 14, 2016, Shelburne made her radio debut in a national radio show called Beadle & Shelburne which she co-hosts with ESPN SportsNation host Michelle Beadle. // Since the mid 2010s, Shelburne has been a Senior Writer at ESPN. She also regularly contributes to the network’s NBA coverage on NBA Today, ESPN Radio and SportsCenter. (wikipedia)

• • •

I should probably start with the one thing about the theme that seems off. I don't talk on WALKIE-TALKIES much (or ever), but aren't "Roger!" and "Copy!" things you say at the *beginning* of your response? Like, you don't wait until after you say something to say "Roger!," do you? Is that ... realistic? "Over!" and "Out!" (and "Over and out!") are definitely response-ending bits of W-T speak, but somehow having "Roger!" and "Copy!" at the *ends* of their respective phrases feels less than authentic. But somehow I didn't need authenticity today because the power of wackiness compelled me. Like, the theme was just so cute and original that I managed not to care about a little syntactical strangeness here and there. The revealer was completely unnecessary, as I knew after the first, and certainly after the second, themer that I was dealing with radio lingo, but WALKIE-TALKIES is such a bouncy and bright and "K"-ful central answer that I didn't resent its presence. It's pleasantly decorative, even if it isn't (or wasn't, for me) necessary to figuring out the theme concept. I have often said about wackiness-based themes that they have to Go Big or Go Home, and I thought this one leaned into the silliness plenty. The fact that I start out this conversation talking to Santa puts things on real wacky ground right away. The remaining clues maybe could have been wackier, but if you imagine that you're talking to Santa the whole time, then wackiness abides. I totally believe that Santa wants a donut. I'm not sure I believe that he's in your Chemistry class, but I *want* to believe it. I absolutely don't believe you, or anyone, forgot which animal crosses the road, but again, the absurdity makes it work. 

I also appreciated how spicy the fill was. PICANTE, even. Lots of tastiness everywhere you turn, from SPUN cotton candy and LemonADE to OAT milk and TARTs and some kind of OLIVE + PECAN + CHICKEN + HAM + FAVA bean (+ PEPA!) concoction at the bottom of the grid—with PONZU sauce (65A: Citrus-based sauce in Japanese cuisine). PONZU!? Is that a debut? Yup, it sure is. We used to put that in / on lots of things. Not sure why we stopped. Maybe we're just on PONZU hiatus. It's tasty! NOM NOM NOM. Anyway, this is a real OMNIVORE's puzzle. GOOD EATS abound (12D: A satisfying meal, informally). I also liked the fact that I finished the puzzle on "WE MADE IT!" Couldn't have scripted it any better. The puzzle gets pretty name-y at times, esp. through the middle (ZARA / BTS / ERIC Carle / Paul SIMON / MRS. Brown and her lovely daughter). I think lots of people are going to blank on RAMONA Shelburne in the SE corner, which already has the never-before-seen PONZU, and the unexpected and weird-to-parse PRBUZZ in it (47D: Marketing team's goal with a new product launch, informally). I can see some solvers struggling there. But I didn't find the name-iness excessive today. But then again, there were no names I didn't know. Always easier to like names when you know them. Oh, NESS, I guess I didn't *really* know that name, but the "Van" part kind of gave me a boost ("Van NESS" just sounded familiar—I grew up in a city with a Van NESS Avenue, so maybe that helped).

I actually found the NW corner a little thorny. I accept Venmo (wink) and I've used Venmo to pay people but I guess I've never made (or accepted) a Venmo "request" for payment, so PAYS (5D: Approves a Venmo request, perhaps) ... seemed right, but I wasn't sure about it. I also wasn't sure about NO LESS, which fits the clue fine, it's just ... rarer than plain old [Equally], and seems more situation-specific (like something you say after you've added something to your previous statement—almost like an emphatic conclusion). So my brain just had some contextual trouble. The biggest problem up there, though, was that clue on PIN-UP (1A: Retro kind of hairstyle). What? There's a hair style called "PIN-UP?" Is pinning your hair up "retro?" That clue seemed like a desperate way to avoid the cheesecake angle. A PIN-UP is, of course, a picture of a sexy model featured in magazines and calendars. Men (typically) would pin these pictures up for display in various locker-room and bar and other male-dominated environments. Popularized sometime around WWII, I think. It's objectifying, the way most modeling is, but I really love good mid-century PIN-UP art. There's some in our downstairs bathroom! The art form has its Grand Masters (Vargas! Elvgren!). "Retro kind of hairstyle" evokes nothing for me. [Does some image searching] Oh, hey ... weird, apparently the hairstyle in question is actually related to PIN-UP models, in that everything I'm seeing online has a real throwback vibe—hair that a PIN-UP model might've had in the '40s. Unsurprisingly, modern trends in women's hair ... not on my radar. 

[Betty Grable, the most famous PIN-UP girl]

Bullets:

• 6A: Pinkglow pineapples and GloFish, for short (GMOS) — another reason the top of the puzzle was a little on the hard side for me. Shouldn't this clue have a "for instance" in it. Like, these are examples of GMOS. You wouldn't clue CAT as merely [Siamese]. You'd write [Siamese, for one]. But leaving that cluing convention nitpickery aside, I had no idea what I was looking at here. I thought maybe Pokémons. Or some kind of reward in some kind of game on some kind of app I'm never going to use.
• 44A: Fish with a Kohaku variety (KOI) — sticking with fish for a moment ... I had no idea there were varieties of KOI. I mean, of course there are, I'm not surprised, I've just never been required to think beyond the simple fact of KOI, crossworld's favorite fish (sorry, MAHI MAHI, you lose).
• 1D: Kind of pants worn on a rainy day, perhaps (PAJAMA) — ??? because you are staying inside, in your pajamas? I can tell you that my students will wear PAJAMA pants (as in pajama bottoms) in any weather. Just ... out and about. Regular-ass streetwear to them (well, some of them). They're probably least likely to wear them on rainy days, but that's because (unlike you, apparently) they are wearing them out of doors.

• 10D: Workout program that's a portmanteau of two different sports (TAE BO) — in the '90s, Billy Blanks made history by combining sports that scientists had previously thought uncombinable: Tae Kwon Do and Bowling. The rest is home exercise history.
• 39D: A little foxy? (KIT) — a baby fox is a kit. "Little foxy" is something I would call a fox if I saw one in the wild. "Oh, hello, little foxy, what are you up to? Killing rodents! Nice!" (really witnessed this once, very cool) (also witnessed fox kits once, even cooler).

That's all for today. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Traditional Vietnamese garment whose name means "long shirt" / THU 5-21-26 / timiL / Fish more formally known as a batomorph / Philanthropic group with a clock face in its logo / The so-called "pineapple isle" / Large-eyed African antelope with a duplicative name / Changed my mind in editing notation / 2000 Eminem single with lines from his "biggest fan" / Something tickled on a piano

Constructor: Zhou Zhang and Mallory Montgomery

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: Change clothes — articles of clothing are clued using visually cryptic clues:

Theme answers:

• BACKWARDS CAP (20A: timiL) (word meaning "cap" is spelled backwards)
• CUT-OFF TEE (35A: Golfer's suppor-) (definition of "tee" gets cut off)
• MINISKIRT (42A: Evade) (word meaning "skirt" is miniaturized)
• STRIPED SOCKS (55A: P | u | n | c | h | e | s) ("stripes" inserted into a word meaning "socks")

Word of the Day: ÁO DÀI (16A: Traditional Vietnamese garment whose name means "long shirt") —

Áo dài (English: /ˈaʊˈzaɪ/; Vietnamese: [ʔaːw˧˦ zaːj˨˩] (North), [ʔaːw˦˥ jaːj˨˩] (South), lit. “long tunic”) is a traditional Vietnamese outfit consisting of a long split tunic worn over silk trousers. It can serve as formalwear for both men and women.

There are inconsistencies in the term áo dài. The currently most common usage is for a Francized design by Nguyễn Cát Tường (whose shop was named "Le Mur"), which is expressly a women's close-fitting design whose shirt is two pieces of cloth sewn together and fastened with buttons. A more specific term for this design would be "áo dài Le Mur". Other writers, especially those who claim its "traditionality", use áo dài as a general category of garments for both men and women, and include older designs such as áo ngũ thân (five-piece shirt), áo tứ thân (four-piece shirt), áo tấc (loose shirt), áo đối khâm (parallel-flap robe), áo viên lĩnh (round-collar robe), áo giao lĩnh (cross-collar robe), áo trực lĩnh (straight-collar robe). (wikipedia)

• • •

[3D: "Bingo!"]

Startled by this puzzle initially because I couldn't believe how easy it was. I should not be able to move through a Thursday grid with this little resistance. It took so long today before I hit a clue that made me hesitate even a bit. In fact, I was literally this far into the grid before I hit a clue I didn't know instantly:

I was thinking of the wrong kind of "interest" and couldn't figure out why ACCRUE wouldn't fit. "IMBUE ... that's not a word for interest." So I switched to crosses, got PIQUE, and off I went again. The puzzle was 90% Monday-easy, on what should be the trickiest day of the week. Now, the theme did make you have to think a little, that's for sure, but when you can work every cross of every theme answer so so easily, you don't really have to sit there thinking—you can just quickly hack your way to a nearly complete answer and then reason it out from there. So my main take away from the puzzle, sadly, was that the editor should've tightened this thing up—a lot. It's insultingly easy for a Thursday. You have to give regular, longtime solvers something to chew on late in the week, come on.

The overall easiness of the puzzle made the one truly original and unfamiliar answer in the puzzle very jarring. Like, you're just feeding me MAA and LLAMA and ORE etc. and then you throw an ÁO DÀI at me!  Yikes. I was like "what are you doing here? you've stumbled into 'Intro To Crosswords'—you want the Advanced Class, down the hall." I was thrilled to have a bit of a struggle and learn a new term, if briefly terrified that the crosses would suddenly fail me and I'd be left with a DNF on what had been, to that point, the easiest Thursday puzzle in the history of the universe. Actually, getting the "correct" answers was particularly reassuring, as AODAI is not a letter string that inspires confidence in an English speaker who is completely ignorant about Vietnamese fashion. "Am I spelling Maggie MAE right? Dear god I hope so." The coolness of ÁO DÀI is, sadly, completely offset by the horrificness of AIS, which crosses it. AIS is never going to fly as a plural. Delete it from your wordlists now, constructors, I'm begging you. First of all, no one wants AI in their crossword. It's being shoved down our throats in every other aspect of our lives, so it would be great if you could not aid and abet the sickening ubiquity, thanks. Also, AIS ... just look at it. On its face, a truly ugly three-letter answer. Detonate it now, you won't regret it.

As for the theme ... I like that the grouping is tight (i.e. the answers to the visual-madness clues are all articles of clothing). I don't think all themes require revealers, but this one probably could've used one simply because ... why? The articles of clothing are arbitrary. They seem to make a nearly-complete outfit, but ... whose? Why not do [Jerks] for HIGH HEELS, for instance?* There's no real logic to the items in clothing, and a clever revealer might've given a greater sense of coherence to the whole endeavor. Also, I'd probably keep all other clothing answers out of my clothing puzzle (sorry, TUXEDO, I know you're a cat, but you're obtrusive. Yeah, and take DIADEM with you). The actual visual trickery in the clues is pretty clever. But I'm having trouble believing in BACKWARDS CAP. I mean, you might wear your baseball cap backwards, sure, but a BACKWARDS CAP is not an article of clothing. It's just a cap ... that you have chosen (why, dudes, why?) to wear backwards. "Yes, excuse me, miss, does this store sell BACKWARDS CAPs?" You see what I mean. The backwardness is not intrinsic. You could, however, buy a CUT-OFF TEE or a MINISKIRT or STRIPED SOCKS, though you probably made your CUT-OFF TEE at home, and if you did, is that really what you call it? I think of "cut-off" as being for jeans and "crop(ped)" as being for shortened tees. A CUT-OFF TEE is a kind of "crop-top," isn't it? Is it? Anyway, those first two themers felt slightly less on-the-money than the second two, but I have to admit that I kinda liked working all the clothing answers out, so ... despite the disheartening easiness and the mild imperfections of the theme, I had a good time.

Bullets:

• 24A: Fish more formally known as a batomorph (RAY) — had the "R" and thought "ROE! ... wait, that's not a kind of fish, that's fish eggs. So ... R- ... R- ... Ruh-roh." And then it came to me. I grew up never thinking of RAY as a standalone word. It was always preceded by stuff like "manta" or "sting" and so RAY never leaps to mind when I see "fish." Just some dude's name.

[There was a brief time in the late '70s when this guy was a cultural phenomenon. No one remembers why. Future archaeologists and/or aliens are going to be like "what the f—?"]

• 46A: Legal boundaries? (ELS) — a "letteral" clue (referring to a letter (or letters) in the clue itself)—the ELS ("L"s) are the first and last letters (i.e. "boundaries") of the word "Legal." To someone who does cryptic crosswords literally every day (i.e. me), this clue is transparent.
• 8D: Philanthropic group with a clock face in its logo (ELKS) — I had no idea. I figured it just had an elk in its logo. Big building with BPOE (Benevolent and Protective Order of ELKS) written on it downtown, never noticed any logo or clock face. Let's have a look:

[Holy cow that is most definitely a clock face. "Elks: We Know What Time It Is!" "Elks: Closed from 5 to 7" "Elks: The Real Plural Is 'Elk,' We Know, We Know"]

• 9D: The so-called "pineapple isle" (LANAI) — thought maybe KAUAI. I was on Maui once and they definitely had pineapples there, too.
• 48D: Large-eyed African antelope with a duplicative name (DIK-DIK) — if this answer was as mysterious to you as ÁO DÀI, I understand. But as a longtime solver, my antelope lexicon is oddly vast (NYALA, ELAND, ORYX, ORIBI, etc.), and so DIK-DIK came to me quickly. Did you know that an auto rickshaw is called a TUK TUK (onomatopoetic for the sound of its two-stroke engine)? Well if not, now you know (TUK TUK = two previous NYTXW appearances) (DIK-DIK: five ... though this is the first in almost 50 years! I must've seen it in other puzzles...).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*"heel" is another word for "jerk" in the sense of "bastard," "asshole," "rat," etc.  

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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