Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle

Constructor: Adam Levav

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none

Word of the Day: ÖZLEM Türeci (34D: ___ Türeci, physician/scientist who co-founded BioNTech) —

Özlem Türeci (Turkish pronunciation: [ˈœzlem ˈtyredʒi]; born 6 March 1967) is a German physician, scientist and entrepreneur. In 2008, she co-founded the biotechnology company BioNTech, which in 2020 developed the first messenger RNA-based vaccine approved for use against COVID-19. Türeci has served as BioNTech's chief medical officer since 2018. Since 2021, she has been Professor of Personalized Immunotherapy at the Helmholtz Institute for Translational Oncology (HI-TRON) and Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. Türeci and her spouse, Uğur Şahin, have won a number of awards. (wikipedia)

• • •

This was more Friday than Saturday. More Wednesday, even. I should not be able to floor a Saturday with almost no resistance. I got STUMPed exactly once—predictably, at ÖZLEM—and then half-stumped at ASIAN TIGER (had the TIGER, wanted the ASIAN, but wouldn't commit to it because it sounded ... vaguely racist or stereotypical or Orientalist or something?) (it's not; see below). Didn't fully understand LOCI (27D: Sites of mutations on chromosomes), which are just "places" to me, but still, that is the answer I wanted, so I can't say the answer held me back. I'm looking around the grid now and honestly not seeing anything that wasn't easy to handle. They have really Really dumbed down Saturdays since I started doing these things, particularly in the last decade or so, maybe even more so in the past year or so. Maybe there's some fear that if a "game" is hard to play, takes up too much time, requires patience and practice, that people just won't "play" it and will stick to bite-size, easy-entry games like ... well, all the other games at NYT Games. I love those games (well, some of them), but I also love the original 15x15 crossword, the elder statesman, the original newspaper "game." So it makes me a little sad to see it defanged like this.

This puzzle took me about five minutes to solve, without rushing. At first, I thought there might be a theme. Maybe you did too. I mean, when a puzzle opens like this, it's understandable if some part of your theme-alarm system gets tripped:

BEBE BABA! Oh boy, here we go (I thought). There's gonna be some B-B- ring around the edge of the grid (those answers are all 4, so it seemed possible), and then there'll be some "BEES" revealer like KILLER BEES or SWARM OF BEES or BEE'S KNEES or BEEHIVE or god knows what. TWO BEES OR NOT TWO BEES? So many tragic theme ideas flashed through my head. But then just like that, the "B-B-" pattern disappeared and I found myself solving a regular-old themeless grid. And every answer seemed to go in as soon as I read its clue. I misspelled AARGH at first (ARRGH?), so there was that ... honestly, there's really not much to talk about in terms of difficulty. So easy to navigate through this one. I went from MEDIA (in MEDIA DIET) to ASAMI, which put the "I" at the end of a long answer, which thus made that long answer Very easy to get (terminal-"I"s are rare, long terminal "I"s especially). So, suddenly ... whoosh whoosh:

Lots of high-value Scrabble letters, right across the middle. One of the "Z"s was of course useless to me (see ÖZLEM, above), but otherwise, "J" got me JARTS and "A" got me SEDAN and on and on. I think my flow got a little interrupted trying to get into the SW from the middle, so I just dove into the SW and found SETI, PREK, and ERIK just waiting to be found and built upon. I actually made a mistake on my very last entry, or was about to when I realized it wasn't going to work with the crosses—I wanted MINE instead of MILK (48D: Exploit over time). But that's it. A somewhat dull walk in the park. The grid itself seems very solid. No real complaints there. But the cluing is both too easy and too dull. It's not even trying to be tough or spicy or sassy or anything. Only two "?" clues in the whole thing, and only one of those (45D: Pop flies?) was at all misleading. I guess there are some faint misdirections or ambiguities here and there that keep it from being too too easy, but looking over the clues, I'm not seeing much effort to be clever or tricky (which Saturdays really need to be). My favorite part of the solve was actually looking at the answer to 26D for the first time, before I looked at the clue but after I'd filled most of it in, and wondering who the hell this non-Thurman UMA was. UMA C. TUALLY? What movie was she in? I've heard of Margaret Qualley, but UMA C. TUALLY ... she's new to me. Possibly because she's imaginary.

Bullet points:

17A: Poisonous plant rumored to have killed the emperor Augustus (BELLADONNA) — I teach the literature of Augustan Rome (specifically Virgil) all the time, so I think about Augustus, but I weirdly never think about how he died. I think about the fact that Virgil died before fully completing the Aeneid. I think about the fact that Augustus exiled Ovid (for "carmen et error" (a mysterious phrase meaning "a song and a mistake") to a little place on the Black Sea called Tomis (modern day Constanța, Romania)). But Augustus's death by (allegedly!) BELLADONNA, this is somehow news to me. BELLADONNA is mentioned nowhere on Augustus's wikipedia page, although there is mention of rumors that Augustus's wife Livia might've poisoned him.

22A: Dictionaries have many of these: Abbr. (PGS) — any book has "many" of these ("many" being a completely meaningless word without context). If you wanted WDS here, you're forgiven. PGS = "pages."
56A: Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea or Taiwan, to an economist (ASIAN TIGER) — Since there are, in fact, tigers in Asia (and only in Asia), I thought that was a factor in the naming ("what symbolic animal of 'the Orient' can we call this phenomenon?"), but it turns out "tiger" is a standalone term: "A tiger economy is the economy of a country which undergoes rapid economic growth, usually accompanied by an increase in the standard of living" (wikipedia). So there aren't just ASIAN TIGERs, there are also Gulf Tigers, Baltic Tigers, and even Celtic Tigers, despite the fact that there haven't been actual tigers in Ireland for ... I'm no tigerologist, but I'm gonna say, ever.
48A: Has only the best intentions (MEANS WELL) — a phrase I cannot hear without thinking of Anthony Perkins' best scene in Psycho (entertaining Marion in his parlor, surrounded by animals he has stuffed) ("People always mean well...":

51A: Feature of many a handbag (CLASP) — not STRAP! This is about as tricky as clues got today.
30D: Denizens of the Great Victoria Desert (EMUS) — had the "E" and I swear to god went through ELKS, EWOK and EELS before EMUS ever occurred to me. I don't think of Australia as having a desert, I think of the whole thing as just being a desert. So it took some effort to get my mind onto the right continent.
61A: Casual hangout (SESH) — is it me, or is this "word" becoming a real *&%&ing nuisance? I can't believe this is only the third SESH of the year (perhaps because they've all come in the past two months). But we're certainly on track for the SESHiest year ever, and if it seems like the "word" came out of nowhere, well, it kinda did. This is a visual representation of SESH in the Shortz Era

[The Great SESH Explosion of the 2020s ... I blame COVID, somehow]

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]
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Constructor: Fritz Juhnke

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: not really — there's a "revealer" of sorts, but it doesn't reveal anything except that the black square configurations in the grid are shaped like "T"s (59A: Abstain ... as suggested by the black squares in this puzzle — TEETOTAL)

Word of the Day: Rod CAREW (44D: Eponym of the A.L. batting title award) —

Rodney Cline Carew (born October 1, 1945) is a Panamanian-American former professional baseball player and coach. He played in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a second baseman, first baseman and designated hitter from 1967 to 1985 for the Minnesota Twins and the California Angels. The most accomplished contact hitter in Twins history, he won the 1977 AL Most Valuable Player Award, setting a Twins record with a .388 batting average. Carew appeared in 18 consecutive All-Star Games and led the AL in hits three times, with his 239 hits in 1977 ranking as the 12th most in a season at the time and the 16th most as of 2024, tied with Willie Keeler’s 239 hits from 1897. He won seven AL batting titles, the second most AL batting titles in history behind Ty Cobb, and on July 12, 2016, the AL batting title was renamed to the Rod Carew American League batting title.
In 1977, Carew was named the recipient of the prestigious Roberto Clemente Award for his involvement in local community affairs. On August 4, 1985, he became the 16th member of the 3,000 hit club with a single to left field off Frank Viola. His 3,053 hits are 27th all time, and his career batting average of .328 is 34th all time. He was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1991 in his first year of eligibility; he appeared on upwards of 90 percent of the ballots. He was also elected to the Caribbean Baseball Hall of Fame, Minnesota Twins Hall of Fame, and Angels Hall of Fame. After retiring as a player, Carew served as a coach for the Angels and the Milwaukee Brewers. (wikipedia)

• • •

The showiest part of the grid is the least interesting thing about it. I could feel that the grid was oddly ... shaped? ... that there was something about it that felt highly segmented and less flowing, but I didn't think much about it. Some grids flow some don't. But then to get to the end of the puzzle and have the puzzle go "TADA! There are 'T's everywhere!"—that was a real disappointment. That's why the grid felt weird to navigate and seemed kinda choppy? All for a bad pun? Revealers should reveal something cool, not point out a completely incidental feature that has nothing to do with the solving experience and isn't really thematic at all. Plus, TEETOTAL is a terrible way to reveal the black-square "T"s. You've got the "TEE" in there, but .... TOTAL? What is that? Yes, there is a "TOTAL," that "TOTAL" is eight, so what? Is the revealer trying to say that the "T" configurations are "TOTAL," in that there are no other black-square configurations? That's an awkward way of phrasing it. Anyway, I Do Not Care about your little non-themes in themeless puzzles unless they are super-clever, and I just don't care about the "T"s or see why they're interesting. I thought the puzzle was just fine without all the "T" business. If you want to do something show-offy, make sure it lands. Perfectly. Otherwise, just let the themeless be a themeless, and let solvers appreciate the shape of the grid on their own terms.

The cluing felt elevated today, like it was actually trying to be a little tough, a little thinky, and I respect that. I was like "oh, we're pushing back a little today, are we? Nice." I never got stuck, but I did feel like I was slower hacking through the grid than I often am on Fridays, and certainly slower than I've been at any time in the past week or so. Some of that resistance came from phrases I don't know or don't really know and certainly don't use, like DOPE SLAP (right up front!) (1A: Whack to the head, in slang) and SLY BOOTS (also up front) (5D: Shifty type). I think of it more as a "D'oh!" slap, and if I'd use any SLY phrase, it would probably be SLY DOG. The BOOTS version feels very antique, which makes an interesting contrast with much of the rest of the grid, which can lean juvenile. Bathroom stuff (LOO, DOO-DOO) and colloquial expressions (EPICNESS) (43A: Sheer quantity of awesome), although tbh I don't really know what generation "EPICNESS" belongs to. Probably not the currently young one. Feels Millennial. I kinda like its slanginess. Gives the grid character. I could've done without SKIN TAG in my grid (32A: Harmless growth). They're unsightly enough on my damn body, I don't need to be reminded of them in my puzzle. (I just have the one, and the doctor once told me how I could remove it myself, and I was like "nope, not a home surgeon in any way shape or form, thx." TMI, I know, but if the puzzle wants to bring it up, then the puzzle should be prepared to have a conversation about it. Those are the rules.

I am a little ... er ... cautiously, warily curious about what the hell "howcatchem" is doing in the COLUMBO clue (38D: 1970s "howcatchem" TV series), because that really feels like a mocking version of Native American-speak. Maybe it's the "How!" part that's throwing me, but "howcatchem" feels like a very typical mid-20c white person's version of how Native Americans speak English, so I hope that's not it. I've watched a bunch of early COLUMBOs and love them, but I have no memory of this particular phrase. [fires up search engine] OK wow, this phrase is not COLUMBO-specific at all. I'm being told that "howcatchem" is the name for an "Inverted Detective Story." It's the counterpart of a "whodunnit." In the latter, you don't know the perpetrator until the end, when there's a big reveal. In a "howcatchem," you know who the killer (or thief or whatever) is from the very start, and the interest in the story lies thus in figuring out not "whodunnit" but (you guessed it) "howcatchem"—that is, how the detective is going to catch the bad guy. I did not know this category of crime show had a name at all. And I've taught crime fiction for years. I have to say, where "whodunnit" sounds great, "howcatchem" sounds awkward as hell, and I will not be using it. But I'm semi-happy to learn it exists, I suppose. And I'm semi-happy with the puzzle overall. No answers really stood out as winners, but there was an overall solidness and smoothness (if not EPICNESS) that I appreciated.

Bullets:

9A: Noted doomsday prepper (NOAH) — I know you're being cute here, but the whole "prepper" phenomenon is something I don't even want to hear about, esp. after one of those "preppers" assassinated MN state rep Melissa Hortman in her home. Am I being unfair to the "prepper community"? Oh well. I'll be sure to try real hard to work on my "heavily armed weirdo extremist" tolerance.
18A: Attention magnet, say (CELEB) — this is not really a "say"-appropriate clue. "Perhaps," perhaps. Anyone might be an "attention magnet." CELEB is not another word for "attention magnet." It's a very specific kind of "attention magnet." I think the clue would actually work much better in reverse. [Celeb, say] for ATTENTION MAGNET. Also, even as I type that, I realize that there is no abbr. indicator in the clue for CELEB, and it really feels like there should be.
37A: Reduced demand for refrigerated trucking, in a way (ATE LOCAL) — loved this. Wordy, yes, but pointedly environmentalist, in an original way. Also, slightly tough. Approved.
49A: Shrub with a "staghorn" variety (SUMAC) — how would I know the "varieties" of SUMAC, I barely know what SUMAC is to begin with. Unless it's YMA SUMAC:

8D: Center of a drupe (PIT) — "drupe" is a great word that doesn't get nearly enough crossword love. Speaking of crosswordy words, did you know that SLOE is a drupe? It's true! I learned this while making an episode of my extremely short-lived podcast called "On the Grid" (way back in '17) with my good friend Lena. We did a whole segment on SLOE, which included making a SLOE gin fizz live ("live") on air. Extremely good times (episode 2, here). Anyway, a drupe is just a stonefruit.
10D: D8 pieces in Dungeons & Dragons, e.g. (OCTAHEDRA) — eight-sided three-dimensional shapes. "D8" = eight-sided die. Real "8" theme going here today, with the D&D dice and the OCTET of scorpion legs and what not.
12D: When squirrels may thermoregulate by splooting (HEAT WAVE) — speaking of HEAT WAVE, we're having one, ugh. Speaking of splooting ... in the grid when???

[no SPLOOTING or SPLOOTED either]

31D: "Sometimes" has two of them (SILENT "E"s) — not the puzzle's finest hour. The SILENT [letter] is hard enough to take on its own, without its becoming a plural.
21A: Deal with The Devil? (TAROT) — because "The Devil" is a card in the TAROT deck (which you "deal" when doing readings)

47D: World capital next to the Sarawat Mountains (SANA'A) — this is just crossword muscle. Do enough crosswords, and you'll build up a good store of short world capital names. I'd venture to guess that SANA'A is the most popular (commonly occurring) of all 5-letter world capital names. Although ACCRA, HANOI, SEOUL and CAIRO might also be vying for that title. Let's check! Ooh, it looks like HANOI is way out in front (115 appearances in Modern Era). 38 for SEOUL, 56 for ACCRA, 61 for CAIRO, and just 29 for SANA'A, but SANA'A is a weird one, since it often appears in four-letter form as well. Don't ask me how that's legal, but it is. Anyway, if you add SANA's 47 appearances to SANA'A's 29 ... well, it's still well behind HANOI. All hail HANOI, king of the world capital 5s.

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]
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