Half of former sitcom duo / FRI 11-22-19 / Summa cum laude spoiler / Animals whose name is derived from Latin for little thief / Troubadour's accompaniment / Black Jeopardy show for short

Constructor: Emily Carroll

Relative difficulty: Easy (4:24)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: SITUATIONSHIP (32A: Romantic gray area) —

A situationship is essentially a relationship that hasn't been defined. So anything that precedes the DTR (define the relationship) conversation but follows the initial first few dates (Women's Health)

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Solid B PLUS, though the clue on B PLUS is terrible—*any* grade that isn't "A" can be a [Summa cum laude spoiler] and also yuck to the whole aspirational quality of that clue. Nobody cares if you're summa. No one will remember but you and your mom. Stop. B PLUS is a good grade. Yeesh. Anyway, this puzzle was a B PLUS, as I was saying. It was also super duper easy. I fat-fingered my way across the keyboard, typoing nonstop, and still ended up just 12 seconds shy of my fastest Friday time in two years. If only I had ever (even once) heard of SITUATIONSHIP, which is one of those words ... ugh, look, I don't use Urban Dictionary, on principle, and without Urban Dictionary, there's nowhere to go for a formal definition of this term, which I guess is some millennial thing like "adulting" or whatever. Not sure why it needed a name, since being involved without formally being involved has been a thing since forever, but sure, wacky sad new words, knock yourselves out. I turn 50 next week, and I am really feeling my "kids these days!" energy right now. I've also been married for a long time, so it's not that shocking that relationship neologisms would've missed me. My favorite part about solving that answer was getting SITUATION- and thinking "... wait, is this the SITUATION ROOM ... is the SITUATION ROOM the new FRIEND ZONE ... or, like, a hotter FRIEND ZONE but still awkward ... and why would you name it after a Wolf Blitzer show!?!?" So please, youths of today, instead of "we're in a SITUATIONSHIP," say "we're ... in the SITUATION ROOM!" And then say "dum dum DUM!" and kind of tilt your head a little—a little news anchor flourish. Do it. You'll like it.


Some very bad clues today. 27D: Some of them are described as red and yellow, but not orange (SEAS), ugh, no, so messed up. "Some of them"??? No, precisely one of them is red and precisely one of them is yellow and actually it's captial-R Red and capital-Y Yellow. Some of them, yeesh. Sometimes you have to back off your cutesy clue 'cause the phrasing just doesn't work. Also, "gray area" seems like a really bad way to describe SITUATIONSHIP. A specific, named thing is almost by definition not a "gray area." You'd never refer to any relationship you were in as an "area." Tin. Ear. Don't like that 9D was PATÉS instead of PATES. Avoid diacritical marks if possible, unless you can make them work in the crosses—let that be your guiding philosophy. Enter into a SITUATIONSHIP with diacritical marks, if you will (I have no idea what I mean here). Let's see, what else? There were exactly four places I got slowed down today—trying to parse USE CARE (15A: Be cautious); figuring out tail end of SITUATIONSHIP; seeing SURER, for some reason (44D: Having fewer reservations); and getting the last part of GOOFUS—I had GOOBER (38D: Stupid person, in slang). Only things I really didn't like today, fill-wise, were LEOI and DUIS. Long answers are solid, shorts are largely inoffensive, so ... B PLUS. Sorry about your summa, but you should still hold your head high, little puzzle.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Alternative to ChapStick / THU 11-21-19 / Channing with 14-year NBA career / Alki for Washington State / Peak in Thessaly / Sound recording copyright symbols

Constructor: Aimee Lucido

Relative difficulty: Challenging (8:48 on an oversized 16-wide grid)

THEME: MIND THE GAP (39A: Underground warning ... or a warning about four squares in this grid) — four squares have "GAP" in them going Across, but represent an actual gap (i.e. an empty space) going Down:

Theme answers:

• THE BI(G AP)PLE (25A: New York City) / "REPO [gap] MAN"(5D: Car tower)
• TO(GA P)ARTY (23A: Classic fraternity bash) / BAD [gap] IDEA (10D: "Uh-oh! Don't do that!")
• SIN(GAP)OREAN (57A: Native of the Lion City) / GYM [gap] SHOE (41D: Bit of workout gear)
• YO(GA P)ANTS (60A: Activewear akin to leggings) / ICE [gap] AGE (44D: Long cold spell)

Word of the Day: Rob ESTES (37A: "Melrose Place" actor Rob) —

Robert Estes (born July 22, 1963) is an American actor. He is known for his roles as Harry Wilsonon the teen drama series 90210, as Sgt. Chris Lorenzo on the crime drama series Silk Stalkings, and as Kyle McBride on the primetime soap opera Melrose Place. (wikipedia)

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I guess the NYT has decided that if you can't beat The New Yorker (the superior crossword at the moment), then just join The New Yorker ... by publishing The New Yorker's regular contributors. Yesterday, Erik Agard. Today, Aimee Lucido. Fine by me. The New Yorker constructor team is ridiculously good. This puzzle played *so* hard for me, and only partly because of the theme. I did kind of fake fall asleep there for a bit, thinking I'd solve in the morning, but instead I got up to solve now (the nighttime), so mayyyybe I'm a little groggy, but I think the clues were just hard, or hard for me to grasp, anyway, I had virtually nothing on my first pass through the entire top half. I think I had, let's see ... EARN, TIE and TOIL, IRE, OPA (wrong), and CLE. That is absolutely it. Finally went SPEAR ESCS (oof, one of the rare ugly bits) CLARITY SPF and got some traction, but even then—blanked on Channing FRYE (73A: Channing with a 14-year N.B.A. career (2005-19), had SLIT at 67A: Cut (SKIP) ... and couldn't get out of that corner. And so the struggle continued...


Eventually stumbled into the center and got the revealer Easy (mayyyybe shoulda found the revealer earlier: note to self!), and so realized that there would be GAPs ... then after getting SNEAKER, figured out one of the GAPs had to be in GYM [space] SHOE, and it was around there that I got SIN(GAP)OREAN, and the full meaning of the theme became clear. But even then, finding those gaps, and just getting all the regular fill, proved slow-going. Everywhere I turned, I just shrugged. Forgot that "Melrose Place" actor ESTES. No idea re: ROSIE the picture book engineer (5A: "___ Revere, Engineer" (best-selling picture book)). Proper nouns are nice when you know them, but brutal when you don't. I don't know how PEES factor into sound recording copyright info or even what the "P" might stand for (31D: Sound recording copyright symbols) (short answer: phonogram). Not expecting SIMP, which feels pejorative, even if it's not, exactly (I briefly thought it was gonna be GIMP, which, yikes) (61D: Fool). I had AIR for ACT (52D: Pretense) and an IMAC Pro, is that a thing? (30A: ___ Pro (IPAD)). [Alternative to ChapStick]??? No clue (EOS). Wanted to SHIR (?) my eggs (10A: Mix, as eggs (BEAT)). TADAS was rough. Had to navigate the horrid EVADE/ELUDE dilemma (64A: Get around). It was a struggle. And extra-wide, so a slightly longer struggle than a normally sized 15x15 might've been. I found some of the fill not great, and it was very much Not on my wavelength in many parts, but the theme is fantastic, and really nicely executed. A very nice puzzle that I wish I'd had a smoother / more pleasant time with.

Helpful proper noun gimmes: MAYA, REGAN, CLE, OSSA, ROO

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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