Joy that might come from being aligned in one's body / FRI 9-23-22 / Setting for Life of Pi / Limbo prerequisite / It's often drawn with three ellipses / Beer Hall Tokyo landmark / Book that becomes a synonym for Finally when t is added to the end / Hardison Aldis Hodge's character on Leverage / Climbing a tree Sichuan noodle dish

Constructor: Erik Agard

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Aldis Hodge (25D: ___ Hardison, Aldis Hodge's character on "Leverage" (ALEC)) —

Aldis Alexander Basil Hodge (born September 20, 1986) is an American actor. Among his significant roles, he played Alec Hardison in the TNT series Leverage, MC Ren in the 2015 biopic Straight Outta Compton, Levi Jackson in the 2016 film Hidden Figures, Noah in the WGN America series Underground, Matthew in Girlfriends and Jim Brown in the 2020 film One Night in Miami.... He will play Carter Hall/Hawkman in the upcoming DC Extended Universe film Black Adam. (wikipedia)

• • •

This managed to be properly tough(ish) and have a lot of that zoom-zoom whoosh-whoosh feeling I look forward to experiencing on Fridays. Like many of Erik's puzzles, this grid is consciously, pointedly, even provocatively inclusive, by which I mean you can feel how whole-heartedly it's trying to represent various kinds of experience that crosswords have historically ignored. Even modern crosswords tend to hew to an imagined "norm" or "mainstream" that has been, unsurprisingly, straight, white, male, Anglo-American-centric, etc. That is, puzzles have tended to look a lot like the people making and producing and especially editing them. Today's puzzle moves its lens all over human experience, all over the globe, while still managing to feel pretty damn mainstream. Basically it was always a lie that being inclusive meant sacrificing mainstream appeal, and this puzzle proves it (as do, increasingly, many puzzles, both in the NYTXW and (esp.) other venues, including, most notably, all the puzzles at the AVCX, as well as the L.A. Times (under Patti Varol's new leadership) and the USA Today (under Erik's own leadership)). The longer answers had so much energy and sizzle. But inclusiveness is hardly the puzzle's only asset. Yes, GENDER EUPHORIA is a wonderful burst of trans-positive joy, but its symmetry-mate on the other side of the grid, ONE STEP AT A TIME, involves a really clever pun clue (which is a high compliment from me, I assure you) (5D: Not in bounds?) (not "bounds" as in "boundaries" but "bounds" as in "leaps & bounds"). And though it's not that showy, I loved the pairing of "NO COMMENT" over "THERE IT IS..." I just imagine someone saying they have NO COMMENT and then not being able to contain their COMMENT, and then some nearby party, who just *knew* there was going to be a COMMENT, exclaiming, "THERE IT IS..." It's a whole short story, is what I'm saying. A wide-ranging lens, a strong colloquial sensibility, and a great sense of fun—that's this puzzle's winning combination. 

Here's the whoosh-whoosh I mentioned up top: bold, bright longer answers just shooting out of the NW and then across the center:

And yet the puzzle wasn't easy for me. I had to earn the whoosh. I put in LINGO right away at (1A: Jargon), but in the back of my head I kept thinking "ARGOT also fits" and then I also maybe wanted MONO at 1D: Like old-fashioned sound reproduction (LO-FI), which obviously doesn't start with LINGO's "L," so I ended up pulling LINGO before eventually working my way back there via SECTS / OCEANS / ICONS. Once I realized it was FORTE and not FORCE at 17A: Strength ... bam, I just exploded out of that section. Great feeling. 

I struggled with short stuff, mostly. Didn't know you needed to have a whole damn MBA just to get a job in "marketing," but I guess for certain jobs in marketing, yeah. Association just wasn't strong for me, so I waited for crosses to help me out. Also could not get hold of the neopronoun FAE, despite its "folklore" hint. Once I got it (via AGES, which was also hard (29D: Characteristics that rarely change in cartoons)), I realized I had probably heard of FAE in this context before, but despite knowing a number of nonbinary people I don't know anyone personally who uses neopronouns, so they just don't come readily to mind yet. Don't really know what "Leverage" is but now that I see Aldis Hodge's face, he definitely looks familiar. Is it weird for an actor to play a character whose name is so much like his own? Aldis playing ALEC? A.H. playing A.H.? I've typed some version of "Aldis Hardison" a bunch of times this morning, a confusion no doubt exacerbated by the fact that I am a big fan of NZ musician Aldous Harding.

I haven't yet mentioned the fact that the grid is absurdly smooth. There's a lot of short stuff, but the closest it comes to grating is stuff ACER and ITSY, and that's not very close, especially when your marquee answers are paying off the way the ones in this puzzle are. Strategic use of cheater squares* (under LOFI, above MBA, and their symmetrical counterparts) undoubtedly helped manage the fill around those longer answers in the middle, resulting in an overall immaculate grid. Hope you found things to like about this puzzle. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. The Finger Lakes Crossword Competition (in support of the adult literacy programs of Tompkins Learning Partners) is tomorrow. The competition (entirely online) starts with a Zoom Kick-Off Event that includes a pre-taped crossword-history show-and-tell by Will Shortz, as well as a live round-table discussion of crossword topics moderated by New Yorker crossword constructor Anna Shechtman. The roundtable panel includes yours truly, "Wordplay" writer Deb Amlen, and longtime constructor (and Ithaca resident) Adam Perl. The Kick-Off starts at 1pm. For the competition itself (a fairly low-key, three-puzzle affair), you can compete solo, as a pair, or as a team. Registration closes at 11:30am on the day of the tournament (i.e. tomorrow). For more info, visit the tournament home page.

*cheater squares = black squares that do not increase the word count, generally used (sparingly) to make a grid easier to fill cleanly

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Japanese fried cutlet / THU 9-22-22 / Camera brand with a red circle logo / Chewy chocolaty morsel / Max Academy Award-winning composer of Now Voyager / Has a wash at the casino / Creatures on an Escher Mobius strip / Sue at Chicago's Field Museum

Constructor: Helen Chen

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: BLACKJACK (34A: *Casino game associated with the sum of this puzzle's shaded squares) — "cards" totaling "21" are found inside casino-related phrases: 

Theme answers:

• PLACES A BET (17A: *Wagers at the casino (11))
• AMOUNT WON (25A: *Profit at the casino (+2 = 13))
• FACE CARDS (48A: *They're worth 10 points at the casino (+1 = 14))
• BREAKS EVEN (56A: *Has a wash at the casino (+7 = 21!))

Word of the Day: Max STEINER (13D: Max ___, Academy Award-winning composer of "Now, Voyager") —

Maximilian Raoul Steiner (May 10, 1888 – December 28, 1971) was an Austrian composer and conductor who, threatened with internment in Germany during WW1, fled to England before emigrating to America in 1914 and became a celebrated composer for film and theatre. He was a child prodigy who conducted his first operetta when he was twelve and became a full-time professional, proficient at composing, arranging, and conducting, by the time he was fifteen. // Steiner worked in England, then Broadway, and in 1929, he moved to Hollywood, where he became one of the first composers to write music scores for films. He is referred to as "the father of film music", as Steiner played a major part in creating the tradition of writing music for films, along with composers Dimitri Tiomkin, Franz Waxman, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Alfred Newman, Bernard Herrmann, and Miklós Rózsa. // Steiner composed over 300 film scores with RKO Pictures and Warner Bros., and was nominated for 24 Academy Awards, winning three: The Informer (1935); Now, Voyager (1942); and Since You Went Away (1944). Besides his Oscar-winning scores, some of Steiner's popular works include King Kong (1933), Little Women(1933), Jezebel (1938), and Casablanca (1942), though he did not compose its love theme, "As Time Goes By". In addition, Steiner scored The Searchers (1956), A Summer Place (1959), and Gone with the Wind (1939), which ranked second on the AFI's list of best American film scores, and is the film score for which he is best known. (wikipedia)

• • •

I have to admit that I don't quite understand this one. Admittedly, I can't think of very many places I'd less like to be than a casino, so there's an inherent topic aversion, but even so I can usually appreciate or at least understand a basic card theme. But here ... I mean, to be clear, I understand the BLACKJACK concept perfectly. The cards total 21, the highest score in the game, so presumably you "win" in the end, but it feels like there must be some element that I'm missing, since merely putting four cards that total 21 in some phrases doesn't seem ... tricky enough. Thursday enough. I see that those phrases are themselves gambling phrases, so that makes the theme somewhat tighter than a normal "hidden words"-type puzzle would be (usually such "hidden words" appear in completely non-thematic phrases). But whatever is gained by having the theme be tighter in that way is surely lost by the fact that the phrases themselves just aren't that strong, particularly the first two: PLACES A BET (arbitrary 3rd-person verb phrase, à la  "EATS A SANDWICH") and AMOUNT WON, which feels really flaccid and weird. Zero strong associations with the casino. You have "winnings" for sure, but AMOUNT WON feels like a line on some imaginary receipt. Bizarre. Further, the "cards" aren't particularly well embedded, in that only two of them (TWO and SEVEN) break across two words, the way a "hidden word" should, ideally. And then there's the unnecessary remedialness of the parenthetical parts of the theme clues. I guess those clues are trying to create some narrative energy, but ... the revealer has already told me the game I'm playing, and the "cards" are highlighted inside their answers so I can see them and ... I can count, so ... whatever drama the parentheses were supposed to be creating felt oddly condescending. Like the game was being taught to a child. Also, the climactic "21!" is kind of undercut by occurring in the clue for the very non-triumphant phrase BREAKS EVEN. Again, casinos are not my milieu. I have had to walk through them a couple times to get to concerts, but I have never voluntarily spent time there. So maybe I'm not the right audience for this puzzle. But I can't imagine even an inveterate gambler would find this theme that compelling, let alone challenging. If there is an element of the theme that I have failed to appreciate, please, let me know.

There's much better news where the fill is concerned. I really liked how SNAPPY and wide-ranging it was. From Max STEINER to RuPaul ("SASHAY Away"), from VELVETY KATSU to highlighted CHEEKBONEs, this puzzle had a lot of fun things going on. Widespread memes! ("Sir, this is an ARBY'S!") YUPPIE satire! MILK DUDs (underrated candy!), CAT POSE, even stupid GPS voice saying "ARRIVED," all of it made the grid feel very alive and lively. The puzzle was very, very easy (maybe too easy for a Thursday), so my struggle points weren't many, but I definitely had some (unpleasant) trouble trying to suss out the odd phrase AMOUNT WON, and then some more (much more pleasant) trouble in the SE, trying to make sense of T-REX over CTRL-P. Totally forgot there was a T-REX named "Sue" in Chicago, so I thought I was looking for an athlete (something about the "Field" in "Field Museum" was saying "sports?" to me). And I have a MacBook, so when I print it's "Command-P," not CTRL-P. So it was fun / slightly challenging to make sense of that mischievous pair of answers. Otherwise, everything felt very straightforward today. 

A few more things:

• 29A: Certain buckwheat pancake (BLIN) — the singular of the much more familiar BLINI. Always looks weird to me in the singular.
• 4D: Fleece (SHEAR) — oh, this also caused me trouble. You SHEAR sheep to *get* "Fleece" (n.) ... but I guess "Fleece" (v.) is also a synonym of SHEAR (though I've only ever heard it used in the metaphorical sense, i.e. if you get overcharged or scammed or otherwise fraudulently separated from your money, you've been "fleeced").
• 1A: Part of the deck from which a dealer deals (TOP) — you hope. The puzzle tries to throw a little bonus thematic content your way here, and at ANTE (19A: It goes in the middle of a table). I'm more interested in getting *away* from the theme and back to eating MILK DUDs while watching "Now, Voyager" (w/ score by Max STEINER). Sounds like a good plan for this rainy day. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. I think this is the constructor's NYTXW debut. Given how strong the grid is, I'm looking forward to seeing her byline again.

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