Trait of the fabled fisherman's wife / MON 1-22-24 / Inexperienced gamer, informally / British publishing house founded in 1935 / Bodily response to something eerie

Constructor: Jake Halperin

Relative difficulty: Medium (with one particularly hard part for this Downs-only solver)

THEME: BIRDS AND BEES (56A: Subject of "the talk" about sex ... or a hint to the answers to the four starred clues) — familiar two-word names or terms where the first word is a "bird" and the second word starts with "B":

Theme answers:

• PENGUIN BOOKS (20A: *British publishing house founded in 1935)
• GOOSEBUMPS (11D: *Bodily response to something eerie)
• TURKEY BOWL (29D: *Thanksgiving football game)
• DOVE BAR (39A: *Certain ice cream or soap product)

Word of the Day: TURKEY BOWL (see 29D) —

High school football games played on Thanksgiving are often called a Turkey Day Game or a Turkey Bowl (not to be confused with Turkey bowling), as Americans typically eat turkeys on Thanksgiving, although the title varies with each game. Most commonly these games are between high school football rivalries although in many cases, when poor weather requires a shorter season, the game can be the culmination of league play among a high-school league, in which the winners of this game will be the league champions for the year. (Statewide playoffs were generally rare until the 1970s and 1980s, which allowed for longer regular seasons.) The custom dates back more than 100 years and is particularly prevalent in the Northeast. In most cases, games are contested with kickoff times as early as 9 a.m., allowing the participants to have the rest of the holiday off. [...]

Unorganized groups have also been known to partake in American football on Thanksgiving. These informal matches are usually known as a Turkey Bowl(not to be confused with some high school football games that also use the name "Turkey Bowl", see above, and with Turkey Bowling). These games are usually unofficiated with a flag football, street football, or touch football format.

While the games themselves are not generally nationally known, Turkey Bowls hold importance for those who participate and it is not uncommon for rivalries to last for decades. Turkey Bowls are played by a variety of people including extended families, college fraternities, volunteer fire departments, and local churches across the country which use the day and the game to have fun, exercise and renew old acquaintances. (wikipedia)

• • •

[47D: Token of past times]

I actually think this theme is great, but I'm super mad at the clue that nearly cost me my Downs-only solve today, so that's mostly what I'm gonna talk about. Up front, anyway. So ... about the spelling of the abbreviated form of "newbie": it's NOOB. Actually, let me be more specific. It's sometimes NEWB, but If You Mention Gaming In Your Clue It Is Definitely NOOB. Not only does NOOB beat NEWB 18-5 in terms of overall NYTXW appearances, but until today, Every Single Time "gaming" was mentioned in the clue, the answer was NOOB. It's a gaming spelling, a gaming term. You all force me to learn all this damn gaming terminology, the least you could do is stick to the damn rules and be consistent. 

[xwordinfo.com]

Here's some more NOOB/NEWB distinction:

And more from wikipedia:

"The origin of this term ["newbie"] is uncertain. Earliest uses probably date to late twentieth century United States Armed Forces jargon, though possible precursor terms are much earlier. Variant forms of the noun include newby and newbie, while the related term noob (often stylized as "n00b") is often used in online gaming."

Notice how "gaming" comes up only in relation to NOOB, not NEWB. It took so long for my brain to let go of NOOB (well, I don't know how long, but it felt long, especially for a Monday). I kept pulling OVEN out when I couldn't get that top section to work, so certain was I that NOOB had to be right. And since I was also having trouble with adjacent RATION (not a great synonym for [Mete out], frankly), that top section gave me fits. And just a few columns over to the east, I struggled to get my hands around WORKMAN as well. I thought the clue was going to have some punny / wordplay angle, like ... maybe "hands" meant "hands of poker" or "cowhands" or something ... but no, literally, someone who works with his hands: WORKMAN. I had RO-EOS for one of the crosses there and the only possibilities my brain would entertain were RODEOS and ROLEOS (a thing I only know about because of crosses—something to do with lumberjack games??? ... well, close, a "logrolling tournament").

Just lost up there. South of the equator, the puzzle was a cinch, but up top, yeesh, lots of trouble. I had PENUIN B- and no idea what it could be ... despite the fact that I have a vintage paperback collection consisting of close to 3,000 books, many of which are, in fact, PENGUIN BOOKS. I was like "What could this be? PENGUIN BOOTS? What are PENGUIN BOOTS? Are they formal? The way a tuxedo, i.e. a PENGUIN SUIT, is formal?" Also, who is this fisherman and what the hell is wrong with his wife? (21D: Trait of the fabled fisherman's wife (GREED)). If she is "fabled," well, whoever fabled her did it out of earshot of me. Never heard of her, or her GREED. AW, GEEzzzzz do not google "fisherman's wife" unless you want to see a very explicit Hokusai print ("Dream of the Fisherman's Wife") featuring a young woman "entwined sexually with a pair of octopuses." [Keeps googling ...] Ah, here we go, the non-octopus version is apparently a Grimm's fairy tale. Something about not asking for too much (from a magic fish), being satisfied with what you have. News to me, I'll tell you that much.

LOW IQ is such a grim answer. All IQ stuff just reeks of eugenics ("The Eugenic Origins of IQ Testing"). All IQ-related answers make me cringe, as does (relatedly) MENSA, and all the punny clues that often come with it. The Very Worst People in our country use the term LOW IQ. See this recent NYT article on the anti-DEI movement. This is a Short-Era debut. Why would you debut this? You certainly don't *need* this term in your Monday grid. Is the "Q" so tempting that you just had to have it? Baffling.

[Why is MENSA defining "colloquium" on its website? Presumably if you're smart enough to get into MENSA, You Know What "Colloquium" Means. Also, someone need to explain to Gabe Werba how deathly the passive voice is]

But back to where I started, which is: this theme is excellent. Great play on words in the revealer, great set of themers, which oddly, and impressively, intersect. Themers rarely do this. Hard enough to get the themers to work out symmetrically, let alone get them to cross one another repeatedly. But that little architectural detail isn't really important. What is important is the light-hearted whimsical theme that's just strange enough to be interesting. "Interesting" is hard to come by on Mondays. I'm impressed. 

OK, that's it. See you later.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Both consonants in "geek" phonetically / THU 2-24-22 / Parties with smokers / Emulate the Lonely Goatherd / One observing the holiday of Arba'een / Montgomery retired WNBA star / Particle with a superscript / Band with first platinum-selling double album

Constructor: Jake Halperin

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: doubled letters — two-word answers that become self-descriptive when you double the first letter of the second word in the answer:

Theme answers:

• LONG-I ISLAND (17A: Wight, e.g.?) (i.e. "Wight" has a long "i" in it)
• HARD-C CANDIES (28A: Crunch bar and Cadbury Creme Egg, e.g.?) (i.e. "Crunch" and "Cadbury Creme" have hard "c"s)
• SILENT-M MOVIE (44A: 1995's "Johnny Mnemonic," e.g.?) (i.e. "Mnemonic" has a silent "m")
• CAPITAL-S SIN (59A: Sloth, e.g.?) (i.e. "Sin" has a capital "S")

Word of the Day: RENEE Montgomery (3D: ___ Montgomery, retired W.N.B.A. star) —

Renee Danielle Montgomery (born December 2, 1986) is a retired American basketball player and sports broadcaster who is currently vice president, part-owner, and investor of the Atlanta Dream, and one of three owners of the FCF Beasts Indoor Football Team. During her 11-year playing career in the Women's National Basketball Association, she won two championships with the Minnesota Lynx in 2015 and 2017. During her college playing career, she won a national championship with the UConn Huskies in 2009. In 2020, she married music artist Sirena Grace in Atlanta, Ga.[...] During the 2011 WNBA season, Montgomery had the best season of her career once she became the starting point guard for the [Connecticut] Sun. She averaged 14.6 ppg and was voted as an all-star for the first time in her career. [...] In 2017, Montgomery averaged 8.0 ppg and achieved a new career-high in field goal shooting percentage. Montgomery also started in 12 of 34 games played while Whalen was sidelined with a hand injury. The Lynx continued to be a championship contender in the league after making it to the Finals for the sixth time in seven seasons, setting up a rematch with the Sparks. This time the Lynx would win in 5 games, winning their fourth championship in seven seasons, tying the now-defunct Houston Comets for most championship titles. (wikipedia)

• • •

Well this is suitably weird. It's not the most consistent theme in the world, but it definitely gets points for creativity. I think the first three themers work great, but that last one really mucks things up (you generally want to reserve that final themer slot for your Best themer, not your worst one). First, I thought the Seven Deadly Sins were "cardinal," not "capital"—I actually don't know the term "capital sin" at all. Or, I do, but only by inference. I've probably seen it, but it feels off. A cardinal sin is "(in Christian tradition) any of the seven deadly sins" (google/Oxford Languages), and Sloth is one of those, so ... insert disappointed frowny face here. But even if you accept this "capital" business, this answer is already an outlier in a much more significant way, in that it is the only answer that refers not to a phonetic change but to a (mere) case change. All the other front parts of the themers refer directly to pronunciation; CAPITAL S has absolutely nothing to do with pronunciation. So on two fronts, it's weak and should never have made the team. I wonder if there are two-word phrases with "soft" or "short" letter options that would've worked. Think on that one yourselves. For now, I'll just say that I definitely enjoyed 75% of this theme. 

The grid was also predominantly enjoyable, but there were a couple moments of cruelty and stupidity that made me cringe. First, SEAN / SPICER—why would you make such a show of that guy's name!? Melissa McCarthy is great, but her presence in the clue cannot remove the slime from the grid. Then, what the hell is a BEGATHON!? That seems a really ungenerous way to talk about a fundraiser. I think that answer is supposed to be fresh and fun, but it felt like something a Newsmax guy like SEAN / SPICER would say about any org. that needed money. I looked it up, and BEGATHON is derogatory slang for absolutely ordinary stuff like PBS fund-raising drives. Come on, man. Today is especially not the day for this sneering selfish right-wing nonsense; I'm already trying hard to ignore the fact that a huge chunk of this country is not-so-secretly happy about the Russian attack on Ukraine (the bombing has begun). So spare me your architects of white-right disinformation and stupidity, and spare me your contempt for the needy. In general, but especially today.

The puzzle was easy, by and large, but I had a few struggles. The most embarrassing struggle, for someone who has a Ph.D. in English and whose daughter minored in linguistics and who generally likes word-related stuff a lot, is that I totally spaced on VELARS (47D: Both consonants in "geek," phonetically). It's normal not to know VELARS—it's probably the toughest vocabulary word in the grid—but *I* should've remembered this. I was trying VOC- and VAL- and everything but the right thing. Had to build most of it from crosses before I remembered it. I also forgot CREAM existed, for a bit (29D: Band with the first platinum-selling double album). Eric Clapton was in that band, so there's some more white-right disinformation-spreading garbage for your puzzling day. Sigh. The funniest thing that happened to me today, screw-up-wise, was that I kept wanting AXE and it kept being wrong until finally it decided to show up at the very bottom of the grid (60D: Eliminate). It's relatively normal to want a word, have it be wrong, and then have it show up elsewhere. But to want that word and have it be wrong *twice* before actually showing up—that's strange. What's really strange is not that I wanted AXES for 7D: Handled sharp objects? (AWLS), but that I wanted AXE again at 42D: Leaf-cutter, e.g. (ANT). I had the "A," obviously. Then I saw "cutter" in the clue and AXE was the first thing that leapt to mind. Never mind that only a psychotic is going to use an AXE to cut leaves. The longer answers today were a joy. I really liked TOP-LOADER and SHAKY CAM, and even the somewhat less showy PRE-FLIGHT, mostly because it started "Rocket Man" playing in my head:

Hope you found this puzzle at least as enjoyable as I did. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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It's found near a trap / THU 8-12-2021 / Sch. with a campus in Narragansett / Michelle who was FIFA's Female Player of the Century / It was once sold medically under the commercial name Delysid / Home to the oldest continuously functioning university in the Americas (since 1551) / Channel with the slogan "Boom."

Constructor: Jake Halperin

Relative difficulty: medium (slightly tipsy 3:45)

THEME: CALLS IT LIKE IT IS [What each asterisked clue's answer does, to correct a misnomer?] — each clue is technically correct, but not what we'd call it: the FUNNY BONE is actually a NERVE, etc.

Theme answers:

• FUNNY BONE NERVE [Sensitive part of the elbow]
• SHOOTING STAR METEOR [Oft-wished-upon sighting]
• KOALA BEAR MARSUPIAL [Symbol of Australia]
• PANAMA ECUADAOR HAT [Headwear made from jipijapa fibers]

Word of the Day: KEKE [Actress/TV host Palmer] —

Lauren Keyana "Keke" Palmer (born August 26, 1993) is an American actress, singer and television personality. She is known for playing leading and character roles in comedy-drama productions, and her accolades include a Black Reel Award, six NAACP Image Awards, and nominations for a Primetime Emmy Award, a Daytime Emmy Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award. An influential figure in popular culture, she was included on Time magazine's list of most influential people in the world in 2019. (Wikipedia)

• • •

It me yet again, occasional indie constructor Christopher Adams filling in for Rex while he's trapped in the JFK airport. The most I can say about JFK: at least it's not Newark. Hopefully he should be free from there and back home and blogging by tomorrow, but while he's off fighting evil airplanes or something, I'm filling in here.

Pretty straightforward theme for a Thursday, IMO; my usual gambit of filling in the first row and then trying all the downs off that wasn't too successful, but getting HOHO / HEH / OPUS / OCHOA gave me confidence that 20-A was SHOOTING STARS...which didn't fit, but most of the downs through the first half of that worked, and so it was easy to assume that the second word was changing. Those downs through SHOOTING gave me FUNNY, and when BONE didn't fit, that confirmed the changing words. Would've found it sooner if I'd looked at the reveal—the clue there really spells things out way too explicitly, IMO—but got there soon enough, and the bottom half went down pretty quickly.

YMMV on whether pedantic corrections / "well, actually..." is a fun theme or not, and probably that's the basis of your judgment here. With some tweaks, this could absolutely have run on a Tuesday or Wednesday, but I have no problems with this on a Thursday—to paraphrase Will Shortz, Thursday is only supposed to be harder than Wednesday; it doesn't have to have a gimmick necessarily. I would have liked to see the clues beefed up to be a little more difficult overall to make it more of a Thursday, but this was a fine puzzle, ignoring day of the week concerns.

renegades by x ambassadors—they're from ithaca, new york!

One thing I didn't notice until typing out the theme clues / entries was that the first three all change the last word, while the last changes the first word. This is, generally, something that should be avoided if possible, and I know Will Shortz likes to avoid that (revisions for this puzzle, for instance, changed it so that the theme change was consistently at the first word of each phrase). Ideally, all four theme entries would've followed the same pattern: either all at the end or all at the beginning; failing that, having two of each) is also fine since there's not really a pattern to break. But having three use the first word (and especially the first three, which sets the solver up to expect the fourth to also use the first word, only to get a c-c-c-combo breaker) is probably the least desirable outcome.

But like I said, I only noticed that while typing this up, and it didn't trip me up while solving: partially because having a reveal in the middle breaks up the theme pattern (even though it's not a theme answer, visually, it's in the grid in a spot where it interrupts those answers), and partially because by the time I got to the last theme answer, I'd already filled in the reveal and so dropped in ECUADOR HAT without thinking about theme details such as this.

i have no compelling reason from the grid to include this; it's just funny

Otherwise, I thought it was really nice how the theme answers were stacked—the constructor didn't have to do that, but it made for a bit of an interesting grid. And working in things like HIGH HEELS, TANGENTIAL, RENEGADE, SALVADOR (albeit too easily clued for a Thursday, but still fun), DITTO MARKS, and AT A GLANCE through two or three theme answers each made for fun moments while solving. I could have done without EQUI-, SYS, ALLO, URI (why not just make it BAD / ARI, for instance), etc., but overall this was more good than bad.

Olio:

• LADY ["___ Bird" (2017 film)] — Only pointing this out because it was a good reminder of this collab from way back when.
• DELT [It's found near a trap] — Here referring to muscles: trapezius and deltoid. I suspect the crossing of DELT / LUNN [Sally ___ (English teacake)] will be a sore spot for many solvers; the clue for DELT is definitely one of the trickier ones in this puzzle, but you still want to make sure that those are crossed fairly and all.
• ONE [Common typo for an exclamation point] — A keyboard key clue; if you don't press the shift key, you'll end up with a 1 instead of a ! and mess up your password and get locked out and (the horror!) have to call an actual live human being in tech support to get unlocked (as ! does).
• KEKE [Actress/TV host Palmer] / AKERS [Michelle who was FIFA's Female Player of the Century] — I did not know either of these names before solving and had to fill both in from crosses. And you know what? I am glad to have learned about both of them. More fill like this in crosswords, please.

Yours in puzzling, Christopher Adams, Court Jester of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Galactic conquerors of film / THU 4-8-21 / Second staff in many an orchestral score / Emerald is a variant of it / 2003 #1 Outkast hit / Drink originally called blanc-cassis / Futuristic delivery device / Physics Nobelist who developed an early model of the atom

Constructor: Jake Halperin

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: boating puns — yes, you read that correctly; actually, it's "place to store your boat" puns:

Theme answers:

• A PIER ON THE SCENE (17A: Weary boater's welcome sight?) (from "appear on the scene")
• WHAT'S UP, DOCK! (27A: Cry on arriving for a boating trip?) (from "What's up, Doc?")
• FOREVER MOOR (49A: Completely retire from boating?) (from "forever more")
• QUAY DEMOGRAPHIC (63A: Boaters, collectively?) (from "key (!) demographic")

Word of the Day: ROSA Klebb (51D: ___ Klebb, bond villain in "From Russia With Love") —

Colonel Rosa Klebb is a fictional character, the main antagonist in the James Bond1957 novel and 1963 film From Russia with Love, in which she is played by Lotte Lenya. Her name is a pun on the popular Soviet phrase for women's rights, khleb i rozy (Cyrillic: хлеб и розы), which in turn was a direct Russian translation of the internationally used labour union slogan "bread and roses". (wikipedia) (my emph.)

• • •

Grim. The fact that all the boating words are actually *boat storage* words gives the theme set a sort of consistency, but that is really all I can say in praise of this theme, which combines a super-corny, super-old-fashioned theme type with a topic I don't care about at all. The latter issue isn't really relevant, but really are we still just using bad puns as the basis for themes. And on a Thursday—the day when the puzzle is supposed to be its sassiest and most innovative? Profound disappointment. The puns aren't even that, uh, splashy. "WHAT'S UP, DOCK!" and FOREVER MOOR are particularly weak, with hardly any change involved in that first one, and with the base phrase ("forever more???") being so tenuous in the second. And speaking of FOREVER MOOR, I had serious pronunciation issues with this puzzle. I think I say "MOOR" with a long "U," not a long "O" sound. For me "MOOR" rhymes with "tandoor" or "Roger Moore." The pronunciation is still close enough to work for the pun to work reasonably well for me, but it's a little off. As opposed to the QUAY in QUAY DEMOGRAPHIC, which was way way off for me. I've apparently been hearing a regional variant my whole life, because *that* word, as I've known it, is pronounced "kay"! Here, read this, from "Grammarphobia":

So, since there are recognized standard variant pronunciations, that means that the great climax to this boating pun puzzle was a pun I absolutely didn't understand. That is, I didn't know what phrase was being punned on. Looked up "K demographic" and "Kay demographic" (lotta Kay Jewelers fans out there...) before somehow realizing that the base phrase I was looking for was "key demographic." Pfft. I would not be surprised if I'm in the minority here, pronunciation-wise, but I will be gobsmacked if I'm the only one who looked at "QUAY DEMOGRAPHIC" and thought "I'm sorry, what?" So that was a less than ideal way to complete the theme, which, as I've said, I didn't care much for to start with. Oh well. Well at least they didn't try to pull off "STAR WHARF" or "RETURN OF THE JETTY."

I liked "YOU GOT THIS!" (31D: Encouraging words), both because it feels fresh and in-the-language, and because it genuinely threw me for a bit: I figured the phrase of encouragement started, "YOU GO, ... someone!" Alas "GIRL" wasn't long enough to complete the answer, so I was briefly left wondering who was being cheered on, but then I was forced to reparse the answer (YOU GOT, not YOU GO) and boom, there it was. I don't mind being fooled when the resulting answer is strong (and, in retrospect, aptly clued). Most of this grid felt laded (!) with oldish familiarish fill. I won't list it all, but there really is a lot. A lot a lot. I mean, just start at the AÇAI / ICE-T crossing in the NE and work your way out from there, you'll see. It's a lot. I really only accept CAP'N if it's followed by Crunch, and the ART I clue just takes weak fill and makes it weird (7D: Beginning of the Constitution: Abbr.). Enough about this puzzle, I think.

One important puzzle event to promote today:

"These Puzzles Fund Abortion" is a pack of 14 puzzles edited by Rachel Fabi and featuring an all-star list of constructors to benefit the Baltimore Abortion Fund (BAF). BAF provides financial assistance to people who live in or travel to Maryland for abortion care. The puzzles are currently available for preorder through a donation to BAF here. Donors who choose to donate anonymously can forward their receipt to the email address listed on the fundraiser page in order to receive the puzzles (they will not be sent automatically). Puzzles will be sent this weekend, and everyone who preorders by Friday, April 9 will be guaranteed to receive them first.  

The constructor slate really is top-notch (Erik Agard! Robyn Weintraub!), and having been a test-solver, I can say that the puzzle quality is really quite high—far more polished and entertaining than your average daily crossword. Do yourself and others a favor and go get these puzzles. And if you could spread the word, that would be great. Thank you. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. big thanks to Will Shortz for the glowing recommendation in his NYT interview yesterday:

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Memorable launch of April 11, 1970 / THU 12-3-20 / College named after a Scottish island / 2007 heist film sequel / Parenthetical comment after an ambiguous witticism

Constructor: Jake Halperin

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (untimed)

THEME: UNLUCKY BREAK (57A: Bad fortune ... as suggested by 19-, 30- and 47-Across?) — the number "13," which is (to some) "unlucky," is represented in the theme answers by the letter "B," which, if "broken" into two pieces, kinda resembles the number "13" — so ""13" looks like "B" broken or, to put it another way, "B" looks like "13" if its two numerals were pushed together:

Theme answers:

• FRIDAY THE BTH (19A: This occurs at least once - and never more than three times - in a year)
• APOLLO B (30A: Memorable launch of April 11, 1970)
• OCEAN'S B (47A: 2007 heist film sequel)

Word of the Day: EZER Weizman (67A: Weizman who once headed the Israeli Air Force) —

Ezer Weizman (Hebrew: עֵזֶר וַיצְמָן‎ Ezer Vaytsman; 15 June 1924 – 24 April 2005) was the seventh President of Israel, first elected in 1993 and re-elected in 1998. Before the presidency, Weizman was commander of the Israeli Air Force and Minister of Defense. (wikipedia)

• • •

One of those themes that probably seemed like a good idea initially. But in practice, it's a thud for two reasons. First, the themers, which are not at all interesting. Two of them are just items in a numerical sequence. Bunch of Apollos. Bunch of Oceans. Here's "13." Pfft. It's a simple number swap, but the number doesn't feel particularly special. It's just one of the numbers of that thing. At least FRIDAY THE BTH is a unique thing (yes, there is a "Friday the 12th" at least once a year, but no one ever talks about that). So the number thing is just blah. Further, one of the themers *involves* the number 13's unluckiness (again, the good themer, the first themer). The others ... don't. So you've got inconsistency and wonkiness. And then the phrasing on the revealer (and its clue) doesn't quite make sense, doesn't really land. The "as suggested" by" is odd. So if I "break" the "B" in two I get an ("unlucky") "13"? But if I solved the puzzle correctly, then it's kind of hard to think of that move as "unlucky." Is it my "Bad fortune" to solve this puzzle? I mean, maybe, but that's no way to talk about your own puzzle. And again, with "13" being "unlucky" in only one of the themers, the revealer really lacks punch. "Unlucky" to whom? How? Not with a bang but a fizzle, this one.

PUN INTENDED is, by far, the best thing in this grid (3D: Parenthetical comment after an ambiguous witticism). I got thrown off the (theme) scent a little bit early on because I assumed that the answer was a themer, being so long and unusual. After I got FRIDAY THE BTH (having had at that point no idea how to get from "B" to "13") I thought maybe PUN INTENDED was going to have some weird aspect to it as well, but then all the crosses checked out and all I had to do was find a couple more "B" / "13" squares, it turns out. The grid seems solid for the most part, though the Scrabble-f'ing in the SW and SE is pretty glaring, although I guess the "Z" in the SE is from a long (good) answer, FLASH FREEZE, so it's not really gratuitous the way the "J" is. And the "J" is handled well enough. Just seeing that "J" crammed into a tiny space where it's functioning initially in both directions is triggering for me. Makes me think someone's priorities aren't straight. Or someone's idea of a good time is different from mine. But in the end, EZER is the only thing that feels truly unfortunate / crosswordesey (I couldn't name a single person who ever headed the *U.S.* Air Force, so ... yeah, no hope here. Also, Israeli prime ministers seem like very fair game; presidents (as Weizman once was), much less so). Oh, I almost forgot the absolute thing in the grid, which is POT TOP, which looks more like a typo of POP-TOP (or "pop-pop," I guess (see 63A)) than anything else (15D: Palindromic kitchen item). I think those are just called ... lids? Never heard POT TOP. I know y'all like palindromes, but know when to say when.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Domination in slang / THU 2-6-20 / Fragrance since 1932 / Title partner of Hobbs in hit 2019 film / In Old Mexico In Old Santa Fe / Target for holistic healing / Portmanteau fruit / Port SSE of Suez Canal / Travel for bigheaded person

Constructor: Jake Halperin

Relative difficulty: Medium, I think (time was somewhere in the 7s, but I was going slowly, taking notes, so the clock doesn't tell me much)

THEME: a chore and more — themers are all ... kind of rhyming puns? ... which all end with some phrase meaning "and the rest" and start with a word that is a (near) homophone of some word in that final phrase. Thus:

Theme answers:

• LIKES AND THE LIKE (15A: Reactions to social media posts?) 
• SETTERS ET CETERA (21A: Breeds of hunting dogs?)
• ALI ET ALII (33A: Boxing champs of the 1960s-'70s?)
• KNOTS AND WHAT NOT (47A: Things that scouts earn badges for?)
• UDDERS AND OTHERS (54A: Cows' various glands?)

Word of the Day: "Hobbs & Shaw" (14A: Title partner of Hobbs in a hit 2019 film) —

Hobbs & Shaw (also known as Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw or Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw) is a 2019 American action film directed by David Leitch and written by Chris Morgan and Drew Pearce, from a story by Morgan. It is a spin-off of the The Fast Saga franchise set in between the events of 2017’s The Fate of the Furious and 2020’s F9. It is the ninth full-length film released overall. The film sees Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham reprise their roles from the main series as Luke Hobbs and Deckard Shaw respectively, and also stars Idris Elba, Vanessa Kirby, Eiza González, Cliff Curtis, and Helen Mirren. The plot follows the unlikely pairing of the titular characters as they team up with Shaw's sister (Kirby) to battle a cybernetically-enhanced terrorist (Elba) threatening the world with a deadly virus. (wikipedia)

• • •

This is obviously not good. I want to say it's a cute idea, but I'm not sure it's even that. I think the theme holds up for maybe two of the five themers (SETTERS ET CETERA, ALI ET ALII), but it really starts unraveling with the others, with other words and syllables getting in the way and making what little charm the theme might have had disappear. UDDERS is particularly bad, since it's a pun and not an attempt at an exact homonym like the others. With LIKES AND THE LIKE and especially KNOTS AND WHAT NOT you don't even feel the theme, really. That is, where ALI ET ALII announces its wordplay pretty forcefully, with those other two it's like "what ... is even happening here? What are the THE and the WHAT doing there? and ... oh, was I supposed to notice that KNOTS and NOT rhyme? Nope. Those words are too ordinary and far apart." These are five phrases that are all 15 letters long; that seems to have been a more important consideration than theme consistency or solving pleasure or anything else. Clunk clunk clunk. The grid is choppy as hell and full of staleage (TANGELO, ADEN, OATER, etc.). What is "staleage"? It's a word I made up. It means "stale stuff." Which brings me to OWNAGE (46A: Domination, in slang), which ... really should've been PWNAGE, imhop (in my humble opinion pancakes).

PROUDER (38D) / UGH (8D)

VERANDAED is so bad it's SUABLE, which is also not a word. You dig? 'Cause I DIG (13A: "Point taken," '60s-style). Did you know you build verandas with TBEAMs? Well, you probably don't, I just wanted to bring up TBEAM, yet another answer from outer space. Honestly, this puzzle lost me from the second it expected me to know anything about "a series of James Patterson novels" (1A: Employer of Detective Lindsay Boxer in a series of James Patterson novels). There was nothing very remarkable about how I solved this. I just puttered around the grid until it was done. If I got stuck, I just moved and came back and then I was unstuck. Not even an epic battle to recount. Just putt putt putt yep all the squares are filled in. I had a single moment of 'wow' and that was when my eyes WIDENed and I thought "wow ... really? VERANDAED?" Great, not my brain is singing this answer to the tune of Boston's "Amanda." And now, if I'm doing my job right, your brain is doing the same. Good day.

["You put a porch upon your house / Then sit and watch the cows / VERANDAED! It's what I did to my estate / And I just think it's great / VERANDAED!"]

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Cost-controlling W.W. II org / WED 12-11-19 / Grease song with aonomatopoeic lyrics / Australian wind instrument / Penner of line language is wine upon lips / Fiesta finger food

Constructor: Jake Halperin

Relative difficulty: Medium (?) (solved on paper)

THEME: THEN AND NOW (62A: Phrase in an article on grown-up child stars, perhaps ... or a hint to this puzzle's circled squares) — themers contain (in circled squares) verbs in both their past and present tense:

Theme answers:

• DIDGERIDOO (DID and DO)
• WATER FEATURES (ATE and EAT)
• WASPISH (WAS and IS)
• "WE GO TOGETHER" (GOT and GET)

Word of the Day: LEDA (14A: Mother of Castor and Pollux) —

In Greek mythology, Leda (/ˈliːdə, ˈleɪ-/; Ancient Greek: Λήδα [lɛ͜ɛ́da͜a]) was an Aetolian princess who became a Spartan queen. Her myth gave rise to the popular motif in Renaissance and later art of Leda and the Swan. // Leda was the daughter of the Aetolian King Thestius hence she was also called Thestias. Her mother was either Leucippe, Deidameia, daughter of Perieres, Eurythemis, daughter of Cleoboea, or Laophonte, daughter of Pleuron. According to Alcman, Leda's parents were Glaucus and Laophonte while Eumelus attested that they are Sisyphus and Panteiduia or Paneidyia.

She married king Tyndareus of Sparta and by him became the mother of Helen of Troy, Clytemnestra, and Castor and Pollux (also spelled "Castor and Polydeuces"). Leda also had three other daughters by Tyndareus: Timandra, Phoebe, and Philonoe. (wikipedia)

• • •

Dutchess, 2002-2019

HELLO, READERS AND SOLVERS IN SYNDICATION (if it's the week of Jan. 12-19, 2020, that's you!). It's January and that means it's time for my annual pitch for financial contributions to the blog, during which I ask regular readers to consider what the blog is worth to them on an annual basis and give accordingly. It's kind of a melancholy January this year, what with the world in, let's say, turmoil. Also, on a personal note, 2019 was the year I lost Dutchess, who was officially The Best Dog, and who was with me well before I was "Rex Parker." Somehow the turning of the calendar to 2020 felt like ... I was leaving her behind. It's not a rational sentiment, but love's not rational, especially pet love. Speaking of love—I try hard to bring a passion and enthusiasm to our shared pastime every time I sit down to this here keyboard. I love what I do here, but it is a lot of work, put in at terrible hours—I'm either writing late at night, or very early in the morning, so that I can have the blog up and ready to go by the time your day starts (9am at the very latest, usually much earlier). I have no major expenses, just my time. Well, I do pay Annabel and Claire, respectively, to write for me once a month, but beyond that, it's just my time. This blog is a source of joy and genuine community to me (and I hope to you) but it is also work, and this is the time of year when I acknowledge that! All I want to do is write and make that writing available to everyone, for free, no restrictions. I have heard any number of suggestions over the years about how I might "monetize" (oof, that word) the blog, but honestly, the only one I want anything to do with is the one I already use—once a year, for one week, I just ask readers to contribute directly. And then I let 51 weeks go by before I bring up the subject again. No ads, no gimmicks. It's just me creating this thing and then people who enjoy the thing supporting the work that goes into creating the thing. It's simple. I like simple. Your support means a lot to me. Knowing that I have a loyal readership really is the gas in the tank, the thing that keeps me solving and writing and never missing a day for 13+ years. I will continue to post the solved grid every day, tell you my feelings about the puzzle every day, make you laugh or wince or furrow your brow or shout at your screen every day, bring you news from the Wider World of Crosswords (beyond the NYT) every day. The Word of the Day is: Quotidian. Occurring every day. Daily. Whether you choose to contribute or not, I'm all yours. Daily.

How much should you give? Whatever you think the blog is worth to you on a yearly basis. Whatever that amount is is fantastic. Some people refuse to pay for what they can get for free. Others just don't have money to spare. All are welcome to read the blog—the site will always be open and free. But if you are able to express your appreciation monetarily, here are two options. First, a Paypal button (which you can also find in the blog sidebar):

Second, a mailing address (checks should be made out to "Rex Parker"):

Rex Parker c/o Michael Sharp
54 Matthews St
Binghamton, NY 13905

All Paypal contributions will be gratefully acknowledged by email. All snail mail contributions will be gratefully acknowledged with hand-written postcards. I. Love. Snail Mail. I love seeing your gorgeous handwriting and then sending you my awful handwriting. It's all so wonderful. This year's cards are illustrations from the covers of classic Puffin Books—Penguin's children's book imprint.  Watership Down, Charlotte's Web, The Phantom Tollbooth, A Wrinkle in Time, How to Play Cricket ... you know, the classics. There are a hundred different covers and they are truly gorgeous. Please note: I don't keep a "mailing list" and don't share my contributor info with anyone. And if you give by snail mail and (for some reason) don't want a thank-you card, just say NO CARD.  As ever, I'm so grateful for your readership and support.

Now on to the puzzle!

• • •

I feel slightly bad for this puzzle. It doesn't have much to offer. I mean, it has something, but nothing substantial. It's trying, but there's just not ... enough here for a real puzzle. On its own, the fact that a verb appears in its past and present tense inside of a phrase really isn't that interesting. And when you spell it out so blatantly like this, well, it's like having a joke explained to you. Not much fun. The theme answers, taken on their own as stand-alone entries, are just fine. DIDGERIDOO and "WE GO TOGETHER" are colorful, actually. But this theme is a huge "who cares?" It needed some other level. And what it especially needed was to have THEN AND NOW as the *title* and not the (awfully awkward-to-clue) revealer. Consider this my quarterly plea for all puzzles to have titles—so many times, what we get as a revealer would function so much better as a title, either because it would create room for another themer in the puzzle, or because, as a revealer, the phrase just doesn't go pow. If I got a puzzle entitled THEN AND NOW, I wouldn't blink, but when you try to serve me THEN AND NOW as a revealer, well, it's awkward. "Phrase in an article on grown-up child stars"???  The fact that you have to imagine such a weirdly specific context means that the phrase is struggling to hold up on its own. NOW AND THEN ... damn, that's a phrase. That stands straight up. THEN AND NOW ... sigh, it's definitely listing, possibly teetering, and generally looks like it needs some help. As a revealer, it goes thud. As a title, no one's going to question it.


Which brings me to why I *really* feel bad for this puzzle—The Wall Street Journal Daily Crossword ran a Puzzle Contest *just last week* that had a sleek and souped-up version of this same theme concept. Its title: "THEN AND NOW." In many ways, it's very unfair to compare them. Matt Gaffney's puzzle in the WSJ was a contest puzzle, which means it was a metapuzzle, where solvers had to figure out the "answer" to the puzzle by finishing the puzzle and then making inferences based on the title / clues / answers in the grid (this week: "The answer to this week's contest crossword is a cartoon duo"). I'm not gonna give any major details away. You can solve the puzzle here (the contest deadline already passed, but who cares? The puzzle is still a delight, with an "answer" that delivers a genuine AHA). What Matt's puzzle shows is a. there are apparently a Lot of potential THEN AND NOW themers out there (Matt's set of themers is entirely different from this NYT set), and b. THEN AND NOW works better as a title then as a revealer, precisely because you aren't in the awkward position of cluing it. Even if the NYT stuck with this straightforward version of the theme, where you circle the verbs inside the themers, having THEN AND NOW as a title instead of a revealer would've given you room for another example of the theme form. And maybe that example would shine. I don't know. I just know that this felt like being spoonfed pablum, and I didn't like it. The fill was pretty weak too (SOR SSR SLO ENCLS OPA etc), but only slightly weaker than the NYT's normal weakness, honestly.


Five things:

• 39A: Sound of a penny dropping? (AHA) — not a bad clue for AHA. Clever. Do you know this idiom? Well, if you don't: here.
• 34D: Winter milestone (FIRST SNOW) — easily my favorite answer in the grid. Feels fresh, original, and timely (don't know if this last snow we got was our first real snow, but man it was memorable. And beautiful. Caused terrible travel delays and got university classes canceled for two days straight. But beautiful. 
• 63D: Window boxes, for short (ACS) — did anyone else put in ADS? I had the "A" and all I could think of were pop-up ads appearing in little boxes on my computer screen. Probably not a common mistake, but I feel confident that there are at least six of you out there who did this, so hello to you.
• 33D: Cost-controlling W.W. II org. (OPA) — this stands for "Office of Price Administration." It surely meant something to you if you were alive during WWII, or if you solved xwords in the pre-Shortzian era. In the 21st century, this answer should be OPI, the exceedingly common brand of nail polish. But I guess that's something women would know more about than men, and, well, we can't have that ... (seriously, we can't, it's just not a thing we can have with this regime)

• 37D: Put pen to paper (WROTE) — I had WRITE. This was an interesting trap, given the theme.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Here's that "Grease" song, in case you're not familiar:


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