Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle

Constructor: Daniel Grinberg and Rafael Musa

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: "In the Rearview" — phrases involving reversal, which are then used to indicate reversed words in subsequent phrases:

Theme answers:

QUICK TURNAROUND (23A: What a tight deadline might require ... or what's found in 30-Across?)

"WHERE DID I PARK?" (contains "RAPID" (i.e. "quick") turned around) (30A: Question when leaving a grocery store, perhaps)

LOOK THE OTHER WAY (46A: Tolerate misbehavior ... or what's found in 56-Across?)

FEDERAL GRANT (contains "GLARE" (i.e. a "look") facing the other way) (56A: Source of some public funding)

ASSBACKWARDS (67A: Totally the wrong way ... or what's found in 79-Across?)

"I'M HAPPY TO OBLIGE" (contains "BOOTY" (i.e. "ass") backwards) (79A: "It'd be my pleasure")

REVERSE COURSE (91A: Completely change one's position ... or what's found in 104-Across?)

SCOTCH TAPE ROLLS (contains "PATH" (i.e. "course") reversed) (Gift-wrapping supplies)

Word of the Day: KATE BUSH (77D: Singer whose 1985 song "Running Up That Hill" became a top 10 hit in 2022 after being featured on "Stranger Things") —

Catherine Bush (born 30 July 1958) is an English singer, songwriter, record producer and dancer. Bush began writing songs at age 11. She was signed to EMI Records after David Gilmour of Pink Floyd helped produce a demo tape. In 1978, at the age of 19, she topped the UK singles chart for four weeks with her debut single "Wuthering Heights", becoming the first female artist to achieve a UK number one with a fully self-written song. Her debut studio album, The Kick Inside (1978), peaked at number three on the UK Albums Chart.
Bush has released 25 UK Top 40 singles, including the Top 10 hits "The Man with the Child in His Eyes" (1978), "Babooshka" (1980), "Running Up That Hill" (1985), "Don't Give Up" (a 1986 duet with Peter Gabriel), and "King of the Mountain" (2005). All nine of her studio albums reached the UK Top 10, with all but one reaching the top five, including the number one albums Never for Ever (1980), Hounds of Love (1985) and the greatest hits compilation The Whole Story (1986). Since The Dreaming (1982), she has produced all of her studio albums. [...]
Bush has received numerous accolades and honours, including 14 Brit Awards nominations and a win for British Female Solo Artist in 1987, as well as seven nominations for Grammy Awards. In 2002, she received the Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music. She was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2013 New Year Honours for services to music. She became a Fellow of the Ivors Academy in the UK in 2020, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2023. (wikipedia)

• • •

There's nothing very original or inventive about this theme, but it's diverting and well-executed and in no way off-putting, which puts it well ahead of most Sundays. The theme was transparent and nothing about it was challenging—which is something of a disappointment on any day, and especially on a Sunday—but it does what it does and it does it consistently and cleanly. The only issues I had were little contrivances in a couple of the theme answers, which were probably a result of needing the theme answers to come out symmetrically. For instance, the phrase is "HAPPY TO OBLIGE"—the "I'M" part, while grammatically reasonable, feels overly formal and tacked on. And the ROLLS in SCOTCH TAPE ROLLS feels superfluous in multiple ways. It's just hanging out there, redundantly, at the end of the phrase, not involved in the backwards "PATH" or anything. Further, I know the phrase as "Bass-Ackward." Did I just make that up? Somehow, I doubt it ... Nope, it's a real phrase, alright. But I guess ASS-BACKWARD must've come first, so that's not really a problem—just another part of the themer set that struck my ears as slightly off. As contrived phrases go, I actually kinda like "WHERE DID I PARK?" Nothing about it seems particularly forced or awkward, and I can imagine asking this very question, though usually not coming out of a grocery store (???). I've never once wondered where I parked after coming out of somewhere so basic, somewhere I visited for only a short time. But if I'm coming home from a plane trip, or if the parking area is truly vast (as with certain malls) and/or multi-tiered, OK, then sure. Anyway, this theme tells you what it's going to do (left half) and then does it (right half), so if nothing else, it's straight-shooting. And totally non-tricky. I know some of you really like non-tricky. Well, here you go.

I got QUICK TURNAROUND and instantly knew that the first set of circled squares were going to contain a word meaning "quick" but turned around. First thing I thought of (in five letters) was RAPID, and sure enough, sure enough. With the rest of the themers, I didn't even have time or inclination to wonder about how the circled squares would be filled; they were all so easy to get, that I never had to put my knowledge of the theme to use. In fact, I can't see any place in the grid that could've caused any major trouble for regular solvers. I had one brief "yikes" section, and that was the CIGNA / CASTS cross. I don't really know CIGNA well, and while I could hear it in my head, I thought it was SIGNA (49D: Aetna alternative). And CASTS ... well, that has one of the trickier clues in the whole puzzle (49A: Collectors of signatures?) (conventionally, esp. if you're a kid, if you have a cast—for a broken arm or leg, say—you get people to sign it). I've never heard anyone use ELEVENTY, even facetiously, but someone somewhere must've, and it wasn't hard to infer. Thought it was weird to refer to King Midas as GREEKY for a couple seconds—surely he's just GREEK—but actually he's not Greek at all (he's from Phrygia, which was in central Anatolia, i.e. modern Turkey), and anyway, the answer has nothing to do with nationality. He wanted everything he touched to turn to gold, and (tragically) got his wish (the gift was a curse, who'd've thunk!?). I guess that makes him GREEDY, sure.

[I've posted this song before but its mid-'80s R&B'ness is so pure, I can't resist]

Another little struggle happened when I had the [Supply at the Hershey Company] as COCOA and then the [Delta hub: Abbr.] as ORL (!?!), which proved awkward when the "R" cross of ORLand really seemed like (and in fact was) some version of "ORLando" (specifically O-TOWN). Took a little backtracking and untangling to get CACAO / ATL / O-TOWN all sorted out. But that was just your ordinary everyday kind of struggle, not at all unexpected on a Sunday. As I say, this one doesn't bring any heat at all, difficulty-wise. Maybe if you don't know the BREW CREW, the SW might get a little hard, with a reality show (TOP CHEF) (99A: Reality competition show with quickfire challenges) and a ["Lohengrin" soprano] down there. But still, that's more likely to be a slow patch than a knee-buckler.

[82D: Nickname for Milwaukee's baseball team]

Comments and explanations:

5D: Receive severe criticism (TAKE HEAT) — I took FLAK there for a little bit
74A: It may be on the chopping block (LOIN) — that is, a piece of meat. Pork LOIN, beef LOIN. I don't like the word LOIN. Don't like the way it sounds, don't like its proximity (aurally and physically) to GROIN. I especially don't like it without its specific meat qualifier. I knew the clue was a tricksy / wordplay clue, but I was hoping for ... a different word (I'm never hoping for LOIN).
47D: Horse's behind (HAUNCH) — speaking of LOIN (specifically the "LOIN and leg of a four-footed animal") ... I often complain about awkward plurals (see, for instance, ATONERS, or IRONIES (side by side!)) but here I'm going to complain about an awkward singular. It's not that singular HAUNCH isn't real, it's just that I hear HAUNCHES way more often, esp. in reference to living creatures (and not meat). In fact, I'm not too sure about the distinction between HAUNCH and HAUNCHES where a horse is concerned. I mean, look at this definition from vocabulary dot com—it doesn't seem to know the singular / plural distinction either:

A haunch is the back end of an animal — its rump and rear leg. When you walk behind a horse, it's important to stay far enough away from its haunches that you won't get kicked. (vocabulary.com) [if HAUNCH is the "back end" in its entirety, how in the world does any one "horse" have more than one "back end"??]

32D: Marriage equality activist Windsor (EDIE) — here's what I wrote about her on Jun. 4, 2022:

EDIE Windsor (1929-2017) was the lead plaintiff in United States v. Windsor (2013), which was a landmark Supreme Court case concerning same-sex marriage, one that paved the way for the legalization of said marriages in this country following Obergefell v. Hodges (2015). It's Pride Month, so though she seems a worthy answer in general, it's especially nice to see her acknowledged this month.

24D: Scarlett Johansson, Rami Malek or Vin Diesel (did you know?) (TWIN) — I didn't know, but ... please don't ask me "did you know?" when I'm solving a crossword. You could tack that question on to literally any crossword clue. All of them. "Did you know?" Shh, I'm solving. I know and don't know lots of things.

10D: Forget to finish writing a clue, mayb (ERR) — I guess this is supposed to be cute, but the thing is, what you have here is not someone "forgetting to finish" the clue. No one leaves the "e" off "maybe" because they "forgot" it. It's a typo / mistake. "Forgetting" has nothing to do with it (except maybe that you "forgot" to proofread, that I'd buy)
16D: Coiffure parts that are sometimes braided (RATTAILS) — lol, the tonal distance, the ... fanciness distance between "coiffure" and RATTAILS cannot be measured. Light years won't cut it. The distance is infinite. In the history of the world, no one has ever put RATTAILS and "coiffure" in the same sentence. Until now. Me. I did it. Call the OED or whoever keeps records about these things.
60D: Love interest in a Hallmark movie, maybe (NICE GUY) — are they always "nice"? To start with? Or even to end with? I watched a bunch at peak COVID (i.e. peak shut-in, peak stave-off-gloom), and I feel like there's often something ... dickish about those guys until the woman, like, makes them come around somehow. Like, they're part of some consortium that's going to tear down the old mill until the plucky local woman gets them to see the meaning of Christmas or some such crap. But admittedly I'm no longer an aficionado, so maybe the lead guys are all just nice and ... not sure where the tension is if that's true, but OK.
84D: Ocean in "Ocean's Eleven" (TESS) — had the "TE-," wrote in TEAM. I saw the original Ocean's Eleven once. I love Soderbergh to death, but somehow can't bring myself to see the Clooney / Roberts ones. I get real cynical when that much "Aren't we beautiful movie stars?" power is aimed at me. I should probably just suck it up and watch. Soderbergh has rarely let me down.

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

Constructor: Rose Conlon

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: belated GALENTINE'S DAY (not really, but kinda felt like it)

Word of the Day: OGALLALA (35D: Great Plains aquifer that supplies over a quarter of U.S. irrigation water) —

The Ogallala Aquifer (oh-gə-LAH-lə) is a shallow water table aquifer surrounded by sand, silt, clay, and gravel located beneath the Great Plains in the United States. As one of the world's largest aquifers, it underlies an area of approximately 174,000 sq mi (450,000 km²) in portions of eight states (South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Texas). It was named in 1898 by geologist N. H. Darton from its type locality near the town of Ogallala, Nebraska. The aquifer is part of the High Plains Aquifer System, and resides in the Ogallala Formation, which is the principal geologic unit underlying 80% of the High Plains.
Large-scale extraction for agricultural purposes started after World War II due partially to center pivot irrigation and to the adaptation of automotive engines to power groundwater wells. Today about 27% of the irrigated land in the entire United States lies over the aquifer, which yields about 30% of the ground water used for irrigation in the United States.The aquifer is at risk of over-extraction and pollution. Since 1950, agricultural irrigation has reduced the saturated volume of the aquifer by an estimated 9%. Once depleted, the aquifer will take over 6,000 years to replenish naturally through rainfall.
The aquifer system supplies drinking water to 82% of the 2.3 million people (1990 census) who live within the boundaries of the High Plains study area.

• • •

Well that was a new experience. It's one thing to come shooting out of a corner and across the grid—that great, elusive "whoosh" feeling—but quite another to come shooting out of a corner and across the grid as a literal HUMAN CANNONBALL (7D: Big shot performer?). This was easily my favorite moment of the puzzle, right here:

Full disclosure: this real-time screenshot of my solve is not "real." I was going to do the screenshot, then noticed that I had ACES where AYES was (now) clearly supposed to go (5D: Pros). So I changed it. Then put the cursor back where it was, at the end of HUMAN CANNONBALL. Yes, like Holly Hunter in Broadcast News, I hate fraud so much that I'm actually disclosing the tiny, completely insignificant way in which the above grid was doctored. Better to just leave mistakes in place. (This is the part of blogging that normally takes place solely in my head, not on the page ... not sure what's going on this morning). Anyway: Whoosh. Big Whoosh. A real feeling of breakthrough, with a little smile tacked on. Good stuff.

Lots of other good stuff in this grid, which had a decidedly younger (than me), slightly female vibe. The latter is probably due entirely to GALENTINE'S DAY (a thing I forgot existed) (37A: Time to celebrate female friendship, in a neologism). Somehow, that one answer is coloring how I'm reading and hearing a lot of the terms in the grid, especially the colloquial stuff. I just assume a group of young women have gone out on the town, you know, "to celebrate female friendship," and so that's the context in which I hear the exclamations and slang and what not—stuff like "I HATE YOU!" (as a compliment) and "OH, DAMN" (as an expression of amazement). Maybe the ladies are at a strip club getting LAP DANCEs, I don't know—you never know what people's LOVE LANGUAGES are going to be—but whatever was going on, people seemed to be having a good time.

The difficulty level was sufficient today. It's possible that this played easier than a typical Saturday, but I got stuck enough, and had to fight enough, that I wasn't disappointed. Hardest parts for me were the NW (the "I HATE" part of "I HATE YOU" and the MATH part of MATH TEAM), and then the GREEN part of GREEN ANACONDA. Getting "I HATE YOU" gave me a good aha feeling. Getting MATH TEAM ... didn't. Do math teams "reckon"? Is "reckoning" supposed to be a synonym for "solving" ... math problems? I can see how "day of reckoning" is tempting wordplay, but that didn't quite work for me. And GREEN ANACONDA, LOL, they come in different colors? I know ANACONDA. Beyond that ... you could put any word in front of ANACONDA, tell me it was a species, and I'd believe you. A wordlist definitely barfed up that term. But whatever, it's real, I assume, and crosses exist, so no (big) problem.

I also could not remember GAMAY (45D: Loire Valley grape variety). Just blanked. Wanted GANAY at some point, why? GAMAY is a grape I've heard of but ... nope, didn't stick. Familiarish, but not familiar enough. I also couldn't spell the Great Plains aquifer, OGALLALA (are "L"s double, or single, when?, etc.). Doesn't help that the Great Plains tribe is called OGLALA (subtribe of the Lakota, actually). This particular spelling challenge had me with "L"s and "A"s in the wrong places at various points, resulting in wrong answers like AFRO instead of LOCS at 46A: Protective hairstyle, familiarly, and ... well, just that wrong answer, I guess. Also wrong down there, AISLE instead of COACH (48D: Certain airplane seating), and SEA instead of SHE (61A: ___-wolf), which I pulled quickly because I remembered that I had already played SEA (at 25D: Huge quantity, it turns out). ENDS for CADS (34D: Heels) was my only other out-and-out error.

Other things:

1A: Utterance that's usually made in pairs (TSK) — got it ... but then immediately doubted it, because TUT works just as well. Anyway, neither of them helped with crosses (though that "K" really should've gotten me KATSU—mad at myself for not immediately remembering KATSU) (3D: Chicken ___, panko-breaded dish)
6A: Classic stop on the vaudeville circuit (PEORIA) — "but will it play in PEORIA?" is a question I remember hearing ... somehow ... in the past ... when pop culture still had a memory of vaudeville. Maybe on The Love Boat?
18A: How criticism of a pastry chef might be delivered? (TARTLY) — good one
31A: Zendaya's role on "Euphoria" (RUE) — one of those answers that makes the puzzle feel like it skews younger (than me). No interest in this show, no idea what characters' names are. Last RUE I knew was in ... Hunger Games, right? Yes. Before that, it was just McClanahan. She was definitely on The Love Boat, at least once.

36A: Acts of service and words of affirmation, for two (LOVE LANGUAGES) — I like the answer, but the clue is dull as dishwater. I wanted more vivid or specific or relatable LOVE LANGUAGES, like ... I dunno, "Baking" or "Foot Massages" or "Sarcasm." The ones in the clue are just lifted from the standard "Five Love Languages," which comes from a book by Gary Chapman, whoever that is, yawn

10D: Like the exterior columns at the Parthenon (DORIC) — so ... not Corinthian, then? Got it.
12D: Candies originally named for their imperfect shape (MILK DUDS) — ok so you know how most things people call "fun facts" are just "facts" and not "fun"? Well this is a fun fact. Legitimately fun. Revelatory.
58D: Club purchase that comes with rules of etiquette (LAP DANCE) — LOL when I finally got this, as I was picturing like a tennis or golf club, and imagining "comes with" meant that they literally handed out a booklet or whatever. Pretty sure that's not what's happening in the strip club. If it's about strip clubs and it's not in ANORA (which still somehow hasn't appeared in the NYTXW), then I don't know about it.
51D: Down Under wear (UGGS) — they ... they wear these all over. Famously. Everywhere. Here there everywhere. Yes, originated Down Under, but ... weird clue. Although it did lead me to this great line from wikipedia: "In Australia, [UGGS] are worn predominantly as slippers and often associated with daggy fashion sense and bogan culture." DAGGY! BOGAN! Please, can we? We've run out of good U.S. slang. Time to go ... down under.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

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