Small vehicle on a railroad track / MON 3-4-24 / "You both swiped right!," on Tinder / Streaming service that dropped th first three letters of its name when it rebranded in 2023 / Film franchise that includes "The Avengers," "Thor" and "Iron Man," in brief

Constructor: Samantha Podos Nowak

Relative difficulty: Medium (solved Downs-only)

THEME: BANANA SPLITS (35A: With 37-Across, some ice cream confections ... or a hint ot the second, fifth, eleventh and fourteenth rows of this puzzle) — the word "BANANA" is "split" across black squares four times:

Theme answers:

• SCUBA / NANAS
• CABANA / NAYSAYER
• SUBURBAN / ANALOG
• CUBAN / ANAIS 

Word of the Day: gimlet (38D: Gimlet or screwdriver = TOOL) —

: a small tool with a screw point, grooved shank, and cross handle for boring holes (merriam-webster.com)

• • •

Now that I see the BANANA gag, I like the theme OK. It's a cute idea. The problem is that there's no real theme material—no theme answer, nothing holding the puzzle together but letters shared between two answers. The only wordplay is in the revealer. It's a virtually non-existent theme until you get the revealer. And the long answers somehow *aren't* involved as theme answers, which makes it awkward. As I was solving, I assumed that the last Across was going to finally tell me what the theme was all about, but when I got "IT'S A MATCH," I still had no idea. Turns out, "IT'S A MATCH" isn't even theme material. It's just ... a long Across. Same with AISLE SEAT. So the puzzle is structurally interesting, but it feels oddly put together, and kind of themeless, without any of the upsides of a themeless (namely, lots of longer, sparkly fill). I concede that the concept is clever, but solving it wasn't terribly fun or satisfying. The grid is laden with overfamiliar stuff (ESL CCS AHAB YER ABA GAEL ALA NAGANO UTERO UHNO), and some of the longer fill just left me cold. Bygone names of streaming services should be scrubbed from your wordlists; I've lost count of how many HBO streaming incarnations there have been: HBOGO, HBONOW, HBOMAX (4D: Streaming service that dropped the first three letters of its name when it rebranded in 2023), and now it's just MAX. Why not throw all of them in the garbage? The first three, anyway. And never having used Tinder, "IT'S A MATCH" felt like a dead-weight phrase to me (56A: "You both swiped right!," on Tinder). I inferred it from crosses, but couldn't think of a context that would make it a worthy standalone answer. I guess that context is Tinder. OK. As I say, the puzzle just didn't resonate with me. If it meant something to you, fantastic.

The Downs-only solve was very easy up top and very hard down below. Whole banks of Downs in the bottom half of the grid were blank after my first pass. ASSIST / QUOTED / ABUSES? Nothing. HANDCAR (?) / "CAN'T BE" / BEAUT? Nothing. I stumbled my way to BEAUT in a most improbable way—by guessing "UH (or UM) NO" at 55D: "Well ... I'll pass" and then guessing that a five-letter word beginning "U" and ending "O" must be UTERO, which put a "T" at the end of 50D: Real gem, and *somehow* BEAUT leapt to mind. From there I could suss out SUBURBAN, and then the CAR part of HAND CAR, and then those pesky parts finally fell, but for a bit there it looked my Downs-only efforts were gonna be a bust.

The big surprise of the day, for me, was realizing that I had no idea that "gimlet" was a TOOL. I assumed, as the clue probably assumed I'd assume, that the "gimlet" and "screwdriver" in 38D: Gimlet or screwdriver were cocktails. Bizarrely, I'd just looked up "gimlet" (the cocktail) earlier in the day, during cocktail hour with my wife (every day, five o'clock, like civilized people). I was remembering that Marlowe drank them with Terry at Victor's in Chandler's The Long Goodbye, and Marlowe insisted they had to be half Rose's and half gin (“beats martinis hollow”), but if you've ever tried that (specifically on Marlowe's recommendation, in my case), you know it's way, way too cloying. Those proportions are horrendous. So anyway that’s how I came to look up the "classic" recipe for a gimlet earlier in the evening. I was even reading about the history of the drink and its name, and I think the damn explanation even *mentioned* that the drink might've gotten its name from some tool! Hang on, I'm going to find it. Ah, here it is—this passage from Liquor.com:

As for who first combined Rose's cordial with navy rations of gin, the story gets murkier. Many like to credit Rear-Admiral Sir Thomas Desmond Gimlette, a British naval doctor, for popularizing the cocktail. Others say it was named after a tool used to bore holes on ships. Like most pre-20th-century cocktails, particularly one that comes from such a simple template—spirit, sugar, and citrus—it's hard to pin down a single point of origin. (my emph.)

Which is more improbable? That I was reading this just hours before solving today's gimlet-containing puzzle, or that my reading it helped me Absolutely Not At All? I sat there with --OL at 38D: Gimlet or screwdriver and had no idea what to do. Began suspecting I had something wrong, until the SPLITS part of BANANA SPLITS became obvious, and TOOL became inevitable. 

Big shout-out to Will Shortz, who announced yesterday (on the NPR Weekend Edition puzzler segment) that he is recovering from a stroke he suffered last month. Hopefully he's back in action soon, and next month's American Crossword Puzzle Tournament continues as scheduled, with him running the show, as usual. He's gonna get such an ovation ... :)

Take care, everyone.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Loose-fitting garment / SUN 3-3-24 / Tree with "eyes" on its bark / High times for the petroleum industry / French desserts whose name translates as "small ovens" / Chinese dish eponym / It can be written in scripts known as naskh and ruq'ah / Hush-hush pacts, in brief / Borough of New Jersey noted for its indoor shopping malls

Constructor: Hoang-Kim Vu

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: "Countdown" — ten theme answers contain the numbers "TEN" through "ONE" (counting down, starting with TEN at the top of the grid and ending with ONE at the bottom); though the theme answers are Acrosses, the numbers contained within them run Down wherever they appear: 

Theme answers: (RED letters run Down)

• 1A: Loose-fitting garment (TENT DRESS)
• 24A: It might help you keep up with old classmates (ALUMNI NEWSLETTER)
• 30A: Carrier of goods by rail (FREIGHT TRAIN)
• 47A: Stop on a publicity tour (PRESS EVENT)
• 61A: Chosen name of five popes (SIXTUS)
• 71A: Break for a bit (TAKE FIVE)
• 80A: French desserts whose name Translates as "small ovens" (PETIT FOURS)
• 108A: Concern at the end of a space journey (EARTH REENTRY)
• 115A: "Take it easy once in a while!" ("DON'T WORK TOO HARD")
• 118A: Sonny and Fredo, for two (CORLEONES)

Word of the Day: SANDRA LEE (89A: TV chef who wrote "Semi-Homemade Cooking") —

 

Sandra Lee Christiansen (née Waldroop; born July 3, 1966), known professionally as Sandra Lee, is an American television chef and author. She is known for her "Semi-Homemade" cooking concept, which Lee describes as using 70 percent packaged and 30 percent fresh products. She received the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lifestyle/Culinary Show Host in 2012 for her work and her show. As the partner of former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, she served as the de facto First Lady Of New Yorkfrom 2011 to 2019, when the couple ended their relationship. (wikipedia)

• • •

Architecturally, this is reasonably impressive. It's just not that interesting, in the end. What I mean is, I figured out fairly early on how the "Countdown" concept was going to work—that it was going to apply in two senses (i.e. we're counting down from TEN to ONE, and each number in the "count" is actually going to head "down"). It's not too hard to find the numbers—they all have empty Down clues. So once you get TEN and NINE up top, you can just fill in the rest of those Downs with the remaining numbers if you want. I didn't, but I could have if I'd care to. So after you discover the theme, it really has nothing left to show you. There's nothing to discover. There's no wordplay. There's just a bunch of answers with numbers running Down inside them, only those aren't going to trip you up, because you know both where they are and what they are. So you've basically got a themeless puzzle on your hands at that point, and even though this grid has a few winners in it ("HE'S WITH ME," SLUSH PILES, "WANNA TRADE"), there's not enough to make a Sunday-sized grid terribly interesting. It's basically a diversion. A fine way to spend 10 minutes or half an hour or whatever, but whatever special magic the theme had to offer is all gone very early, and then it's just a matter of dutifully finishing the job. 

[35A: Haim of "Licorice Pizza" (ALANA)]

There's one notable issue with the theme execution, but it's a problem that was quite possibly unavoidably—namely, that all the numbers from TEN to ONE are well and truly hidden inside their respective answers. That is, TEN does not appear as the number TEN, but as the letter string T-E-N, and all the other numbers do likewise ... except FIVE. FIVE just cannot hide. It appears as itself, in the answer TAKE FIVE. It's a tribute to how well, how cleverly the other numbers are hidden, that the FIVE stands out so glaringly. Like, "hi, I'm FIVE, sorry, I don't know how to hide inside other answers, just pretend I'm not here." But what longer answer could possibly contain the letter string "F-I-V-E"? SCIFI VENTURE? WIFI VENDOR? "... IF I'VE EVER SEEN ONE"? That last one is at least a phrase people say. But my point is, there are next to no options. So ... TAKE FIVE. 

There were some awkward moments while solving this, most notably ... SIXTUS!!? Five popes actually chose that name, and I've heard of precisely none of them? Wow. I really (really really) wanted the answer to be SEXTUS, which sounds so much more popey, but SEX is not a number (well, it is, in Latin, it's "six," but ... it's not one of *our* numbers). So that was awkward because it was arcane. Then there was TINDERS, which was awkward because it was an Improbable Plural (71D: Birch bark and pine cones, e.g.). And then ASPIRER, awkward because no way, not a thing, please stop (111A: Ambitious sort). And something about STOLEN ART feels kind of "green-paint"-y to me.* You could put anything after STOLEN and kinda sorta justify it, but STOLEN ART doesn't quite feel strong enough to stand alone. Mostly, though, I thought the fill held up just fine, especially considering the fairly demanding theme. 

The cluing felt sufficiently difficult for a Sunday. Despite the theme's revealing too much of itself too quickly, the grid still had some resistance to offer. Something about the phrasing of the clue on COW POX made it hard for me—I think it's the "used it" bit (11D: Edward Jenner used it when developing the world's first successful vaccine). Accurate enough, I'm sure, but I'm not used to think of viruses being "used." I had to go through both REAIR and RERUN before I got to RERAN (31D: Put on the air again) (really should've noticed that "air" was in the clue and so couldn't be in the answer). Had "UH, NO" before "UM, NO" (19D: "Yeah ... pass"). No idea who SANDRA LEE is, despite the fact that she was apparently First Lady of my state from 2011 to 2019 (!?!?!). SANDRA DEE and SARA LEE, them I know, but SANDRA LEE—this is the first I'm hearing of her. I had SEETHES before SEES RED (129A: Rages). I wish I had more interesting errors. Sorry.

A reminder that the Boswords Spring Themeless League starts this week, with Puzzle #1 dropping tomorrow, Monday, Mar. 4! There are three different difficulty levels so if you're crossword competition curious, why not give it a go? Here's League coordinator John Lieb with the deets:

Registration for the Boswords 2024 Spring Themeless League is open! This weekly event in March and April features weekly themeless puzzles -- clued at three levels of difficulty -- from an all-star roster of constructors and are edited by Brad Wilber. To register, to watch a short video about the league, to view the constructor line-up, and to learn more, go to www.boswords.org.

Also out this week:

[cat not included]

So excited that the world (Crossworld and normal world) finally gets to read this beautifully written, deeply engrossing, and often wryly funny memoir/history about the connections between crosswords and feminism, written by the brilliant Anna Shechtman, crossword constructor for the New Yorker and (as of very recently) Cornell University English professor. Anna writes about her own life in candid, surprising ways, and her research on the roles women have played in the history of the crossword is original and revelatory. The Riddles of the Sphinx is the best writing on crossword puzzles that I've ever read. So treat yourself. Go get it. And if you can, go see her!:

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

*"green paint" is a term for an answer you can imagine someone saying, but that doesn't seem strong enough to qualify as a standalone crossword entry

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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