Malaysian state or island / FRI 5-2-25 / Bams, cracks or dots, in mahjong / Literary bird with a one-word vocabulary, apparently / Much of northern Arkansas / Sides of circles? / Titular female Disney character whose name also appears in a Shakespeare play / Sunfish feature / Lincoln Center's former ___ Fisher Hall

Constructor: Robyn Weintraub

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: PENANG (45A: Malaysian state or island) —

Penang is a Malaysian state located on the northwest coast of Peninsular Malaysia along the Strait of Malacca. It has two parts: Penang Island, where the capital city, George Town, is located, and Seberang Perai on the Malay Peninsula. These two halves are physically connected by the Penang Bridge and the Second Penang Bridge. The state shares borders with Kedah to the north and east, and Perak to the south.

Penang is one of Malaysia's most developed economic powerhouses, with the highest GDP per capita and Human Development Index of all states. It also ranks second among the states in terms of average wages. Penang is Malaysia's leading exporter with over RM447 billion (US$108.94 billion) in exports in 2023, primarily through the Penang International Airport which is also the nation's second busiest by aircraft movements. [...] 

With 1.74 million residents and a population density of 1,659/km² (4,300/sq mi) as of 2020, Penang is one of Malaysia's most densely populated and urbanised states. Seberang Perai is Malaysia's third largest city by population. Penang is culturally diverse with a population that includes Chinese, Malays, Indians, Eurasians, Siamese and expatriates. (wikipedia) 

• • •

This puzzle had many of the things I have come to expect from a Robyn Weintraub Friday puzzle, but also a couple things I have come not to expect—namely, obscure (or at least totally unknown-to-me) proper nouns. I am vaguely familiar with the existence of the musical "Hello, Dolly," but where LEVI factors in, I have no idea. Is that her last name? Dolly LEVI? Oh yeah, looks like. Dolly Gallagher LEVI. I've seen LEVI in the puzzle a million different ways, but if I ever saw it this way, I forgot it, for sure (16A: Dolly of "Hello, Dolly!"). So LEVI per se, not obscure, but as clued, yeesh. Needed most of the crosses. Then there's PENANG, which ... well, ya got me. I am familiar with PANANG curry, but I'm pretty sure that's spelled the way I just spelled it (turns out it's spelled many ways in English, but yes, PANANG is one of them, and PENANG ... isn't). I confess I know next to nothing about Malaysia. PENANG is home to the country's second-most populous city (George Town), but off the top of my head I couldn't name Malaysia's *first*-most populous city (it's Kuala Lumpur, which, unlike George Town (and PENANG), I've heard of and should've known, my bad). In the days before I started solving, the NYTXW used to be virtually awash in PENANG. It made 20 of its 24 total appearances before I was ever born, and last appeared in a grid in 1993. In fact, this is the first appearance of PENANG in the Modern (Shortz) Era. The island probably had WWII importance, which gave it some lasting post-war cultural relevance. But by the '70s its appearances waned, and even Maleska (Shortz's notoriously obscure geography-hungry predecessor) only used it twice, late in his career (side note: the last two people to use PENANG in a puzzle were named Patterson Pepple (1991) and Tap Osborn (1993), which are some great names. Annnnyway, huge "what the!?" at PENANG. And now, after a little research, I know why. Back to my initial point, or one of them: I don't normally have to hunt geographical obscurities when I'm finished solving one of Robyn's puzzles. I think the fact that PENANG is throwing me so bad today is testament to how high my expectations are for smoothness and general familiarity when it comes to Robyn's puzzles.

But as I said up top, in addition to the unexpected (namely, the proper noun mysteries), there was the very-much-expected—that is, the delightful longer colloquial phrases zinging across the grid. "THINK IT OVER," "HOW CAN I RESIST?," "YOU GET THE IDEA" ... you get the idea: all the hallmark Weintraub pizzazz and loveliness, AS EXPECTED. The grid had a light touch. It felt airy (complimentary) and breezy and I zoom-zoomed through it with (mostly) great pleasure. Again, PENANG doesn't stand out *nearly* so much if it doesn't represent a fairly bumpy departure from the creamy norm. The grid felt maybe a little heavy on the short crosswordy stuff (ARNO OLIN ERG CHE ATON IDES ILSA etc.), but never in a way that felt abusive or lazy. 

Outside of PENANG, and to a lesser extent, LEVI, I had only minor trouble today. I could not make heads or tails of the HALF clue at first (25D: One of two for one). I am doing so many cryptic crosswords these days that I just looked at the clue and started thinking about it on a very literal basis, i.e. "what does the word 'one' have two of? Uh ... vowels?" No no no. I mean, yes, it has two vowels, but no, that is not relevant here. But yes, any one thing, cut in half, has two ... halves? I guess you can't really argue with that. I also didn't find "Well, THEN ..." intuitive.  Or, I found it too intuitive—so ordinary that I couldn't believe it was being passed off as a standalone phrase. In funnier struggles, I put [Much of northern Arkansas] in the AZORES for a second or two (which is what happens when your internal Pattern Recognition Software fails at speed). I also had a ROBIN (Robyn!) as the one-word bird ("tweedly deedily dee [short birdsong], tweedly deedily dee, tweedly deedily dee, [short birdsong]" etc.) instead of Poe's RAVEN ("Nevermore!") (38A: Literary bird with a one-word vocabulary, apparently). 

Bullets:

• 17A: Sides of circles? (ONION RINGS) — never saw the clue. I solve short stuff first and then look at clues for longer answers ... but I must've had most of ONION RINGS already filled in and didn't even bother? Or maybe I did, and just saw the word "sides" and that was enough? It all happened so fast. 
• 29A: Titular female Disney character whose name also appears in a Shakespeare play (ARIEL) / 30A: Titular male Shakespeare character whose name also appears in a Disney film (TIMON) — so that's The Little Mermaid and The Tempest for ARIEL, and TIMON of Athens and The Lion King for TIMON. You know, I've never seen The Lion King. I stopped seeing that first new wave of Disney films right after Aladdin, I think. TIMON is the meerkat who is best friends with Pumbaa, the warthog.

• 36A: Sunfish feature (SAIL) — oh this was slightly toughish for me too. No idea that a sunfish was a type of sailboat. Even after I got the answer, I assumed that SAIL was just a name for the actual sunfish's rather large fin...

• 12D: Lincoln Center's former ___ Fisher Hall (AVERY) — familiarish, but ... why would you put a "former" hall in the puzzle? What happened to the hall? ... [Looks it up] ... Ah, I see. It's still there. But ... looks like the Yale School of Drama isn't the only thing David Geffen has managed to plaster his name on. 
• 24D: Concrete example of rotational forces and fluid dynamics? (CEMENT MIXER) — the five-year-old in me loves seeing a CEMENT MIXER. He doesn't so much love the clue, but vroom vroom, chug chug, spin spin, CEMENT MIXER, fun. Reminds me of reading Richard Scarry books as a kid. So many great vehicles in there...

• 46D: Super Monkey Ball brand (SEGA) — again, no idea. Way more "no idea"s than I'm used to in a Weintraub Friday, but SEGA is such a familiar game brand that I didn't get held up too much here. 
• 36D: Bams, cracks or dots, in mahjong (SUITS) — did not know this, but guessed it immediately, and thank god, or else I'd still be dealing with the sunfish's TAIL.

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

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Tswana for "fly" / THU 5-1-25 / Trailblazing astronaut Jemison / Modern prefix with normativity / Gorgeous ones, informally / Video game character speaking a gibberish language / It's "read" as a stern warning / Cat breed named after an Indonesian island from which it didn't originate / Film based on the 1983 children's novel "The Sheep-Pig" / Big thing in fast food? / Turn into stars, say? / Title friend of Marlin in an animated film

Constructor: Aidan Deshong and Adam Levav

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: CIRCLES BACK (37A: Brings up a prior topic ... or a hint to making sense of the answers to this puzzle's starred clues) — in six Across answers, letters in "circles" must be moved to the "back" of the word in order for the clue to make sense:

Theme answers:

• BASELINE (18A: *Cat breed named after an Indonesian island from which it didn't originate) (i.e. BALINESE)
• RICOTTA (24A: *It's "read" as a stern warning) (i.e. RIOT ACT)
• KIMONOS (26A: *Relative of a snowboard) (i.e. MONOSKI)
• AVENGER (52A: *Carve out, in a way) (i.e. ENGRAVE)
• DUSTPAN (55A: *Comedy club fare) (i.e. STAND-UP)
• REVILING (61A: *Villain's expression) (i.e. EVIL GRIN)

Word of the Day: INÉS Mendoza (65A: ___ Mendoza, former first lady of Puerto Rico) —

 

Inés María Mendoza Rivera de Muñoz Marín (January 10, 1908 in Naguabo, Puerto Rico – August 13, 1990 in San Juan), was a former First Lady of Puerto Rico, teacher, writer and socialite. She was the second wife of Governor Luis Muñoz Marín. Inés Mendoza stood by the Spanish language, defying the new colonial authorities that wanted to replace it with English.

• • •

Pretty remedial for a Thursday. This opened effortlessly for me ...

... and then before I knew it, I had the first themer almost completely filled in, without ever having looked at its clue. I could see that RIC-TT- had to be RICOTTA, the only question was why:

And the "why" didn't take me long to figure out. Easy to see "RIOT ACT" in that jumble of letters. How to get to "RIOT ACT"? Move the circles to the end. Theme, solved. After that, it's a regular-old crossword that just requires you to do some mental contortions every so often. Nothing tricky beyond the one trick. The revealer was the only thing left to discover, and ... yeah, it's a good one. Says what it does. But the nature of this puzzle, particularly the structure of this grid, meant that there wasn't going to be that much in the way of interesting fill today (outside the theme answers, that is; some of those are alright). Actually, TRÈS CHIC and LIP RINGS and BLANKIES and KEEPSAKE are pretty good. Normally not a big fan of baby-talk in my puzzles, but BLANKIES didn't bug me at all. The theme is clever, but it didn't play very exciting for me. It's one of those themes that are more architecturally interesting than they are game-play interesting. And the whole thing ended up far too easy for a Thursday. Probably confusing before you get the gimmick, but the non-theme stuff wasn't putting up much of a fight, so it was easy to flood the themers with crosses and then piece together the gimmick from there.

My only trouble came when my "aha" moment at 18A: *Cat breed named after an Indonesian island from which it didn't originate led me to the correct answer ... but then I wrote it in as the (incorrect) homophone of the correct answer: BASSLINE. This meant that, bizarrely, the hardest answer for me to get today was the three-letter ELM (19D: West ___ (furniture retailer)). Instead of E-- I had S-- and thought "West ... SKY?" I think I was thinking of SKY West—that's, like, an airline or something, isn't it? Yes! Ugh. Then I thought "isn't the furniture retailer West NINE?" But no, that's Nine West, and that's a fashion retailer. Clearly having retail trouble today. With two themers also in the NE, it seemed like that corner might be trouble, but gimmes like ARIANA and PALEO meant I was able to work it out. The corresponding SW corner also seemed like it might give me trouble—your only way in is from the back ends of two themers, but "GAL pal" and GENOA really helped me out there. That corner is pretty awful, in that it's jam-packed with proper nouns—three proper nouns crossing three other proper nouns in a tiny error that also has two themers?! Potential nightmare. I spent part of yesterday evening watching a bunch of relatively inexperienced college-age students solve crosswords, which immediately made apparent the perils of proper nouns. They were crashing out on stuff like Senator Mike CRAPO and the island of PALAU, and had trouble spelling Andre AGASSI. And I've seen my daughter (b. 2000) struggle at proper noun pile-ups that longtime solvers wouldn't struggle with because longtime solvers forget how many common crossword answers aren't necessarily all that common irl. Even with popular brands (AVEENO, say)—that answer came to me almost instantly. Why? Because I know my lotion brands so well? Hell no. Because my brain knows the brands That Are Likely To Appear in a Crossword? Yes. Anyway, all the proper nouns in the SW (except INÈS) seem reasonably familiar to me, but the density felt dangerous down there. (Shout-out to the Binghamton Crossword Club—y'all were fun to hang out with)

[My favorite two words on this announcement are 1. "exciting" and 2. "professional"]

[sincerely, my apologies to every ACPT judge who had to deal with this handwriting]

The fill on this one ran a little toward the FEEBLER side (FEEBLER being the wrong word I wrote in at first for 43D: More delicate and weak (FRAILER)). How are the BAHA Men still appearing in puzzles in the year 2025? And ECLAT and IAMB and ATILT and TSETSE gave the grid a little bit of a musty feel at times. But there's no real eye-roll or "ugh" moments in the grid. It's sufficiently solid. "I LEFT" is not a great partial, but I figure you get one free partial per puzzle, and when it's easy like that one was, well, no harm done

Other things:

• 20A: Places to carry out some takeout orders, for short? (ORS) — jocular clues about surgery, awesome! (actually, as someone who is having ... something ... "taken out" in a couple weeks, this one made me smile, however grimly) (I'm just fine, btw—routine stuff)
• 62D: President posthumously inducted in the Word Golf Hall of Fame (IKE) — so ... not ABE, then? OK. 
• 44A: Past-tense verb that's potentially confusing (but grammatically correct!) when written twice in a row (HAD) — "potentially confusing"? Not as confusing as this clue, I assure you. A novel-length clue, complete with parenthetical comment, for ... HAD? Interesting choice.
• 60A: Video game character speaking a gibberish language (SIM) — is this just any SIM or specifically the SIMs in "The SIMS?" I feel like people were playing "The SIMs" back when the BAHA Men were big. 

• 68A: Title friend of Marlin in an animated film (DORY) — I always forget Finding DORY was a thing.
• 69A: Times Square ball drop setting, in brief (EST) — "setting" here refers to time zone, i.e. Eastern Standard Time (the time "setting" in NYC on NYE).
• 31A: Is for the people? (ARE) — a person is. People ARE. Verb tense humor!
• 7D: Film based on the 1983 children's novel "The Sheep-Pig" (BABE) — really leaning into kids movies today. Although BABE kind of transcends kidness. I remember it as being great, but I haven't seen it in 30 years. 
• 12D: Turn into stars, say? (CENSOR) — sometimes you use asterisks (i.e. stars, "****") to stand in for swear words. In comics, these stars (and other symbols) are known as "grawlix"

• 35D: Big thing in fast food? (MAC) — this is so dumb it amused me. I just like the implications that there are other not-so-big macs out there, or that a "MAC" is a thing at all.
• 51A: Popping pills, say (ON MEDS) — pretty sure that if you are taking prescribed drugs, "popping" is not the right word. "Popping" implies recreational use or abuse. ON DRUGS, sure. ON MEDS doesn't ring true.

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

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