Tell-all Reddit sesh / FRI 4-25-25 / Ran through some laundry, say / Number that stands for letters, in brief / ___ saltado (traditional Peruvian dish) / Wyndham alternative / She "learned" Arabic in December 2015

Constructor: Adrian Johnson

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: LOMO saltado (8D: ___ saltado (traditional Peruvian dish)) —

Lomo saltado is a popular, traditional Peruvian dish, a stir fry that typically combines marinated strips of sirloin (or other beef steak) with onions, tomatoes, french fries, and other ingredients; and is typically served with rice. The dish originated as part of the chifa tradition, the Chinese cuisine of Peru, though its popularity has made it part of the mainstream culture. [...] The dish is normally prepared by marinating sirloin strips in vinegar, soy sauce, and spices, then stir frying these with red onions, parsley, tomatoes, and possibly other ingredients. The use of both potatoes (which originated in Peru) and rice (which originated in Asia) as starches is typical of the cultural blending that the dish represents. // In his 2013 article in the Huffington Post UK, British-Peruvian chef Martin Morales called lomo saltado "one of Peru's most loved dishes" and said that this dish "shows the rich fusion of old and new worlds. This juicy mixture of beef, onions, tomatoes, aji Amarillo paste and soy sauce sauteed in a large pan (or wok) is one of the many contributions Chinese immigration brought to Peru." He explains, "Lomo Saltado is sometimes known as a Criollo dish but more known as a Peruvian-Chinese dish; a favourite chifa dish. These are its true roots". (wikipedia)

• • •

A little heavy on the contemporary pop culture trivia for my tastes, but the longer stuff was so good (and so prevalent) that all the short (mostly) actor and singer names ended up being mere gnatlike annoyances rather than real puzzle-ruiners. I just DEEP SIGHed my way through them and tried to focus instead on the really good stuff like DEEP SIGH (35D: [What is it this time?!]) and HEAD SLAP (41A: [Oy!]) and AND WHAT NOT and what not (25D: "... plus all the rest"). JUST A SEC is pretty ordinary stuff, but everything else of eight letters and longer in this puzzle is at least good, if not very good or excellent. The SOVIET BLOC bloc in the NW reads great from top to bottom, as does the CARBO LOADS short stack in the SE—every ten-letter Across in those two quadrants, just smooth as hell. And please, no complaints about not knowing AYO EDEBIRI. How many times has she been in the grid by now? (Lots—just this past Tuesday, in fact). Hers is the one pop culture name in the puzzle I actually welcomed, as I don't think I've seen her get the full-name treatment before (she's always AYO—four times this year already—but before today, her last name has only ever appeared in clues, never the grid itself). I did not spell her last name correctly at first pass, but I was damn close (went with EDIBIRI instead of EDEBIRI). Felt good to feel like I had her name (almost) well and truly under my belt (only recently got there with UZO ADUBA—another award-winning TV actor—and I've had way longer with that name). 

I like HIDDEN STAIRCASE (34A: Passage in a mystery novel?), and I like how HIDDEN STAIRCASE is doing the opposite of hiding, i.e. hanging out in the dead center of the puzzle. I'm now imagining a HIDDEN STAIRCASE-themed puzzle where HIDDEN STAIRCASE is the revealer and also "HIDDEN STAIRCASE" can be found in the grid on the diagonal, from SW to NE (or NW to SE, works either way). You could clue the revealer as [There's one of these in this puzzle], something like that. Although I guess there would be two ... though only one of them would be truly "hidden." Anyway, because it's a 15, you could put that revealer anywhere, on any row, and it would work with the diagonal version of itself. No circled squares to help you see the diagonal HIDDEN STAIRCASE, though—that would negate the whole "hidden" part. Maybe you could also work SPIRAL STAIRCASE in there, and that one *could* have circled squares. Sorry ... these are the ideas you usually just scratch in your notebook and then never show anyone because they are insane. The Point Is: HIDDEN STAIRCASE, good answer.

Only a few outright mistakes today. The EDEBIRI spelling, I've been over. I also (very) briefly thought the [Home of the Bahla Fort, a UNESCO World Heritage Site] was AGRA (!?), and (in that same section) I thought it was INSIDE DIRT, not INSIDE DOPE. Looks like INSIDE DOPE is far better attested, but because DIRT and DOPE are both gossip / insider info, INSIDE DIRT felt right. Also in that same NW section, I encountered one of the few answers I just outright did not know: LOMO saltada. Would've been totally content with LOMI saltada, which is what I had when I was stuck in the DIRT. Other things I simply didn't know: MIA whoever that is (F&F movies are v. popular, obviously, but I can't imagine sitting through one); and TIP ROAST ... I've heard of "tri-tip," but never TIP ROAST, which sounds like someone's name, or like an insult-comedy-based retirement celebration for Tip O'Neill (he was Speaker of the House forever, as fixed and seemingly eternal a political presence as Ronald Reagan when I was a kid ... then he died and Reagan died and yadda yadda yadda here we are! History!). 

[Got my Fun City Editions Blu-Ray of this John Sayles movie (1983), with this decorative slipcase, in the mail the other day; exciting (to me)]

Notes:

• 16A: Sch. that joined the Big Ten in 2024 (UCLA) — speaking of "when I was a kid," if you had told 12yo me that UCLA would one day be in the Big Ten I would've said "you dirty liar" and then when you showed me proof from a future newspaper, which you would have on your phone because newspapers don't exist anymore, after I came to after having passed out from seeing your phone, I would've boooooooed this new college sports development. In my day (!) the Big Ten was just upper midwest schools and UCLA was in the Pac-Ten, which was all west coast schools, and those two conferences *fought each other* annually in the Rose Bowl. It made sense. Now it's just a mishmash of garbage bowls and gerrymandered conferences with no regional character whatsoever. There are 18 teams in the Big Ten. Words, what do they mean, do they mean things?
• 4D: "Fighting" Big Ten team (ILLINI) — O.G. Big Ten team (joined 1896 ... 128 years before UCLA joined).
• 55A: Wyndham alternative (OMNI) — the "alternative" in an OMNI clue is usually "Hyatt" (7 times) or "Marriott" (6). This is only the second use of "Wyndham" in an OMNI clue. This is perhaps the least consequential or interesting statistic I've ever cited. 

• 1D: She "learned" Arabic in December 2015 (SIRI) — go ahead and put scare quotes around "She," too. Please. 
• 7D: Ran through some laundry, say (BLED) — because laundry is (notoriously) sharp, so when you run through it, you cut your feet and they bleed.
• 36D: Tell-all Reddit sesh (AMA) — don't love SESH in the grid and, it turns out, don't love it in the clues any better.
• 42D: "My child is on the honor roll" and others (DECALS) — oof, wrong on two counts. First of all, the "decal" would say "My child is on the honor roll at [such and such a school]"—just saying "My child is on the honor roll" on its own would be a weird thing to advertise via "decal." Second of all, the term is "bumper sticker"; you only ever see this message on bumper stickers. Things you put on your car are bumper stickers. I don't know where you stick decals, but "My child etc." messages go on bumper stickers. Exclusively. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. HARRY is the first name of singer/actor HARRY Styles (just in case you thought “HARRY” was a “style” of music (!))

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

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Noted criminal extradited to the U.S. in 2017 / THU 4-24-25 / Eponymous Italian designer Mario / The Knights of ___, shadowy side group in "Star Wars" / Might, to Shakespeare / ___ Holden, U.S. soccer player-turned-commentator / Dave ___, seven-time All-Star pitcher for the Blue Jays / One-named singer who's a former member of One Direction / Like some socks and chess players / People celebrated worldwide on March 8 / Verb that sounds like a number and is a letter backward

Constructor: Kathleen Duncan

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: GENRE-BENDING (51D: Mixing thematic elements and tropes ... or a feature of this puzzle?) — genres literally bend (i.e. change direction mid-answer, at a ninety-degree angle)

Theme answers:

• DARK FANTASY (1A: "Interview with the Vampire" and "Prince of Thorns")
• MOCKUMENTARY (6A: "Borat" and "This Is Spinal Tap")
• COMING-OF-AGE (35D: "Lady Bird" and "Stand by Me")
• COZY MYSTERY (24D: "The Thursday Murder Club" and "A Killer Sundae")
• PERIOD PIECE (46D: "Downton Abbey" and "Shogun")

Word of the Day: ZAYN (34D: One-named singer who's a former member of One Direction) —

Zain Javadd "Zayn" Malik (/ˈmælɪk/ MAL-ik; born 12 January 1993) is an English singer-songwriter. He auditioned as a solo contestant for the British music competition television series The X Factor in 2010, where he ended up being a part of five-piece boy band One Direction, which went on to become one of the best-selling boy bands of all time. He left the group in March 2015 and signed a solo recording contract with RCA Records.

Adopting a more alternative R&B music style on his first solo studio album, Mind of Mine (2016), and its lead single, "Pillowtalk", he became the first British male artist to debut at number one in both the UK and US with his debut single and album. His subsequent collaborative singles "I Don't Wanna Live Forever" with Taylor Swift and "Dusk Till Dawn" featuring Sia were met with international success. He released his second studio album, Icarus Falls, in 2018, followed by his third album, Nobody Is Listening, in 2021.

Malik has received several accolades, including an American Music Award and a MTV Video Music Award. He is the only artist to have won the Billboard Music Award for New Artist of the Year twice, receiving it once as a member of One Direction in 2013 and again in 2017 as a soloist. (wikipedia)

• • •

On the one hand, those are all genres, and they all bend, so the puzzle does what it says it does. You can't argue with the execution, at least on a literal level. On the other hand, I've seen answers "bend" before (a bunch)—this one gives its own reason, but from a solving standpoint, there's nothing particularly new or exciting here. I was expecting the revealer to reveal some second level, some aspect of the puzzle I hadn't noticed while dutifully entering all the right-angle genres. At first I actually thought the genres themselves were "genre-bending"—like, hybrid genres (DARK FANTASY is a subgenre, MOCKUMENTARY obviously blends "documentary" with satire, etc.). But in the end, the genres are just genres. COZY MYSTERY is just a genre. You need genres long enough to make it interesting when you bend them (i.e. ROMANCE on its own would be dull), and these all do nicely. But there's no second level here. There are genres. They bend. Therefore, GENRE-BENDING. The end. It's a hard thing to do—build a puzzle around themers that change directions. The strain it puts on the grid is tremendous, and you really have to build the grid carefully because once you figure out where those themers are gonna go (the first thing you'd do), you've got fixed letters *everywhere*, which really reduces your flexibility as a constructor. So though the fill isn't squeaky clean, it's impressive that this grid came out as clean as it is, given the thematic pressures. There's nothing particularly tricky or even novel about the theme today, but it's a fine example of a type, and I enjoyed working out some of the thornier patches. A completely adequate, and occasionally charming, Thursday.

What was charming about it? Well, I'm gonna be a bit of a pervert here and say OBEISANT was charming. I obediently wrote in OBEDIENT there, and then it didn't work, and then I remembered that OBEISANT existed, somewhere in the Quaintville section of my brain, and I wrote it in, and it worked. Sandwiched between the much harder-sounding MOCKUMENTARY and VENDETTA, OBEISANT made for a nice textural contrast—deliciously quaint sandwich filling. Straight out of a COZY MYSTERY, that one. I enjoyed remembering some movies, like Lady Bird and Stand by Me and This is ... Spinal Tap! And Clueless, frankly. The greatest "AS IF!" of all time. The epitome of "AS IF!"s. The "AS IF!" paradigm.

There were a couple of parts where I really had to work to dig out the answers, most notably at the COZY part of COZY MYSTERY, which is the site of a proper-noun pile-up that had me floundering for a bit. Robert Frost ... collection? (You Come TOO)!? Never heard of it. As for ZAYN ... he has two names. ZAYN Malik. The way I know this is the crossword has told me so. Repeatedly. Four MALIKs in the past eight years or so, all of them clued with some variation of [Singer Zayn]. Which means he is a singer with two names. Yes, he goes by the one name. But he also goes by the two names, so he was not legible to me at all as a "One-named singer," even with the One Direction hint (you will not be surprised to find out that I was not a big One Direction fan, as I was not a teenage girl in the 2010s ... or ever, now that I think of it). So I wasn't getting the "Z"s from COZY or ZAYN, and, worse, I had TARRY for 33A: Dither (TIZZY), so it wasn't til I committed to COZY that I could finally get the "Z" train rolling. "Dither" (as a verb) means "act indecisively," which seemed like a form of TARRYing. Bah. Also STU was nearby, who the hell is that? (30A: ___ Holden, U.S. soccer player-turned-commentator). He didn't really make the whole "ZZ" part any harder, but he's standing nearby, so I'm blaming him for my struggles as well. Proper nouns got you down? Welcome to TOO-ZAYN-STU! It is a murky, confusing place.

Once I managed to pull out of the TOO-ZAYN-STU station, the only other rough spot on the trip was trying to figure out what MAY- was going to do with its tail end (37D: Might, to Shakespeare). Ugh, that was right at an important (and narrow) passageway from center to SE. Momentum, stopped! MAYETH? MAYHAP? I entertained both. But no, MAYEST. Sigh. MAYEST / ESE may be the puzzle's lowest moment. Not quite EWW-worthy, but ... not great.

Bullets:

• 69A: Person with the shift after a long one of yours (RELIEVER) — man that clue is awkward. Awkwardly phrased ("a long one of yours"???) and awkwardly not about baseball. The only way to clue RELIEVER in a believable way is to go through baseball. Or ... I don't know, aspirin, I suppose ([Pain ___]).
• 11D: Like some socks and chess players (MATED) — socks are paired, come on. "Oh, look, mother, I have MATED my socks! My chores are now completed! MAYEST I go outside and play with my hoop and stick now, mother!? I'm ever so OBEISANT." In conclusion: paired. Or matched. I would also accept 'matched.'
• 42D: Button added to Apple's Messages app in 2022 (EDIT) — a long and boring clue for a simple word. Was this supposed to be an exciting event? You don't EDIT texts, you send subsequent texts with asterisks indicating what you meant to say. It's a time-honored tradition. Anyway, why are you editing your texts, Shakespeare? They're just texts.
  
• 55D: People celebrated worldwide on March 8 (WOMEN) — I had OBTAIN as RETAIN at first (60A: Get), and then assumed this answer ended in "S" (because plural), so I was trying to make sense of "WE--S" for a bit. "WELTS? WEEDS? WEEKS? What the hell kind of people are these?!"

• 52D: Dave ___, seven-time All-Star pitcher for the Blue Jays (STIEB) — laughed out loud here, mainly because I imagined all the justly-mad non-baseball fans being justly mad at this answer. I collected baseball cards when STIEB was active, and even I was like "... is he a STIEG? STAUB? No, that's Rusty STAUB..." In short, despite the seven All-Star appearances, he's kind of an obscurity if you're not a (middle-aged or older) baseball fan.
• 2D: Verb that sounds like a number ... and is a letter backward (ATE) — sounds like "8" and is a the (Greek) letter "ETA" (uppercase Η, lowercase η) spelled backwards.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

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