College attendee in "Toy Story 3" / WED 8 2-23 / Billionaires' homes, often / Life study of the biologist E. O. Wilson

Constructor: Barbara Lin

Relative difficulty: Easy? (7:21 while very distracted)

THEME: Repeated syllables — Theme answers read as A-B-C-B-A

Theme answers:

• [Starting with an X in the corner, say?] for TIC TAC TOE TACTIC
• [Rocket launcher that makes a whimsical buzzing sound?] for KAZOO BAZOOKA
• [Become a leading citizen of North Dakota?] for GO FAR IN FARGO
• [Disrespected adviser?] for TORMENTED MENTOR

Word of the Day: TOUCH-ME-NOTS ([Like pansies, but not touch-me-nots] for HARDY) —

The seed pods have five valves which coil back rapidly to eject the seeds in a process called explosive dehiscence or ballistochory. This reaction is where the name 'touch-me-not' comes from; in mature seed pods, dehiscence can easily be triggered with a light touch.

• • •

Hey besties! Glad to see you on a Malaika MWednesday. Today was perfect-- I made a beautiful spreadsheet during the day, and I had an amazing dinner with my sister at night. My tomatoes are growing like fiends and each day I harvest succulent, juicy, sun-warmed fruits like imagine the goddess Demeter would. My solving beverage today was El Mezcalero and my solving music was "When the Sun Goes Down." When I hear those snaps at the beginning I basically start crying immediately, a reaction I adore in musical soundtracks.

I thought this puzzle was adorable! I am typically not a fan of "wacky" clues / entries but these all seemed just plausible enough to be fun and silly. (KAZOO BAZOOKA was the least plausible, and therefore the least fun, but it made up for it with the silly letters I think.) This also had the extra bonus where I thought "okay, I get it, repetitive sounds" and then I realized that they follow a perfect pattern (A-B-C-B-A) phonetically and in terms of spelling. Normally, themes being Technical for the sake of being Technical doesn't do much for me (I mention this specifically because when Jeff Chen reviews puzzles, he adores this quality which he sometimes refers to as a theme being "tight"), but in this case, I was won over!

Things I didn't like.... not a ton! I think YER is a bad entry (my bar for "bad" is that if I were making a puzzle and the only option was YER I would stop and change something to make sure that entry didn't make it in) but it was the only one that jumps out to me. The theme answers are so fun to say aloud, and while I don't think the other clues and entries were exceptionally glowing or delightful, enough of them connected with me (see the bullets) that I had a great time.

Oh, and one final paragraph to discuss ice cream, in light of [Possible response to "Who wants ice cream?!"] for I DO. First of all, I always want ice cream. I can not think of a time or place where I would say no (or "I don't") to ice cream. Second of all, I am living in ice cream hell in my Walkable Coastal Elite City. Each day, the train spits me out in front of a boutique ice cream parlor which sells insane flavors like "everything bagel" and charges $7.50 for one scoop (yes you read that correctly) and I succumb an embarrassing amount. It is truly my fatal flaw. (Although to be clear, I succumb to paying a lot of money, not to ordering a dumb flavor. I get (non-vegan) chocolate fudge brownie because I am a traditionalist.) Please comment below how much one scoop of ice cream costs at a parlor in your town. (DO NOT include grocery store prices please!! That's different.)

VL means Van Leeuwen

Bullets:

• [Autobiographical heroine of the "Little House" series] for LAURA — I grew up reading the Little House books (never saw the show) and the descriptions of food will stick with me forever. I still think about the blackbird pie that Ma made after Pa was able to shoot down the pests attacking their crops, with the meat falling off the bone and the flaky golden crust.
• [Like everyone on March 17, it's said] for IRISH — I have never heard this line, but I love the concept. It makes me think of attending Indian weddings, where we take enormous pleasure in dressing every guest, regardless of ethnicity, in traditional garb. 
• [Activist Abrams] for STACEY — Lots to say about STACEY Abrams, but my favorite detail is that she writes romance novels under a pen name!! I am a romance aficionado (I like contemporary realistic fiction) so if you have any recs, please share below. For me, "Red, White, and Royal Blue" and "The Soulmate Equation" are all-time faves.
• [Fey who wrote "Bossypants"] for TINA — I loved "Bossypants!" I will never forget the advice she gave about crying in the office but being nervous people won't take your seriously because now you're A Woman Who Cries-- she said if you really, really need to cry, do it because it'll scare people into submission. Speaking from experience, I agree!
• [Starters] for A-TEAM — It took me ages to parse this, I was reading it as "ate am" and trying to relate it to "appetizers" and just kind of shrugged until I eventually got there.

xoxo Malaika

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Kimono tightener / TUE 8-1-23 / Bollywood Star Aishwarya ___ / Record label that declined to sign the Beatles in 1962

Constructor: Kathryn Ladner

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (pretty average time for me)

THEME: UP A TREE — Circled letters spell out the names of 9 trees, rising up in the grid.

Word of the Day: ZARA (Multinational clothing retailer based in Spain) —

ZARA (Spanish: [ˈθaɾa]) is a Spanish multi-national retail clothing chain. It specialises in fast fashion, and sells clothing, accessories, shoes, beauty products and perfumes. (Side note: It's never a great sign when headings on your company's Wikipedia page include "Exploitation and Child Labour" and "Allegations of Anti-Semitisim").

• • •

Hey folks, it's Eli back filling in for Rex again! When I agreed to write the blog for August 1, I neglected to realize that it would involve solving and writing on July 31, which is my wife's birthday (Happy Birthday, Melissa!). So, here I am, husband of the year, blogging the puzzle for all of you. Forgive me if I keep it a little brief.

To begin with, there's a lot of theme here. Like, A LOT. I don't always even pay attention to circled letters in an early week puzzle, and there were So. Many. Of. Them. That's not necessarily a negative thing, but this much theme density is always going to strain the fill. Rather than list all of the clues impacted, I'm just going to list out the trees (see above re: wife's birthday).

Theme answers:

• MAGNOLIA
• ELM
• BIRCH
• ASPEN
• CEDAR
• PINE
• MAPLE
• FIR
• SYCAMORE

Wow. I have a couple of theme nits to pick. First, it's a little weird that the column starting 11D has two trees in it (FIR and MAPLE) and all of the others only have one, but the trees aren't symmetrically laid out (more of a forest than a tree farm - does that work?), so it's not a huge deal. My other thought is having ENT (24D: Tolkein tree creature) is a cute nod to the theme, but using the word "tree" in the clue when the answer splits the revealer UP A TREE (34A: Cornered ... or a hint to this puzzle's circled squares) isn't ideal. I'm not a huge stickler when it comes to this kind of duplication, but I know it really bothers some people.

Number 1: The larch

Really, though, the theme is fine. Impressive construction for sure. But the fill does suffer a bit. There's a lot of short crosswordese that isn't doing the puzzle any favors: OBI, ETAL, AERO, TOR, ACAI, ENE, ELAND, ANI, etc. Also not a huge fan of EVILER (51D: More dastardly) or partials like NO I (57A: "There's ___ in team") or VENI (9D "___, vidi, vici"). Such is the way of the Tuesday.

There's some fun stuff, too, though. Haven't thought about the BAHA MEN in a while (15A: "Who Let the Dogs Out" group):

Not exactly something I need or want to reminded of, but it made for a fun answer. Let's balance it out with some Beatles, who get a double dip today in DECCA (26A: Record label that declined to sign the Beatles in 1962) and RINGO (43D: Bandmate of John, Paul and George). 

Who Let the Hey Bulldog Out? If you open those two videos in separate tabs and play them at the same time, you'll open a wormhole to another dimension.

All in all, a perfectly acceptable Tuesday in my book. 

Bullets:

• IN A-FLAT (18A: Like Chopin's "Aeolian Harp" étude) — I don't think I saw this while solving and thought the clue might be something like, "Where you might live in London."
• INFO (20A: Deets and dope) —This clue just tickled me a bit. Somehow both fresh feeling and old-fashioned.
• ALLEN (21A: William G. ___, patentee of a kind of wrench)

Ikea owes William a debt that can never be paid.

• MORALES (66A: Miles ____, teen who becomes Spider-Man in "Into the Spider-Verse)— Two great movies (so far) and some really entertaining comics. One of my favorites.

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