Fish commonly caught in the Upper Midwest / MON 8-25-25 / A smile, perhaps / Greeting between buddies / Banned substances in sports, for short / Salesperson making unsolicited phone contact / Player protecting a QB's blind side, often / When repeated, an old newsboy's cry

Constructor: Ryan Mathiason

Relative difficulty: Medium-ish, when solved Downs-only (though I ultimately failed in this endeavor)

THEME: ON THE LINE (62A: At stake ... or where you may find 17-, 24-, 24-, 38- and 50-Across) — things that you might find "ON THE LINE":

Theme answers:

• LAKE TROUT (17A: Fish commonly caught in the Upper Midwest)
• LEFT TACKLE (24A: Player protecting a QB's blind side, often)
• LAUNDRY (38A: Household chore traditionally done on Mondays)
• COLD CALLER (50A: Salesperson making unsolicited phone contact)

Word of the Day: PEDS (55A: Banned substances in sports, for short) —

Performance-enhancing substances (PESs), also known as performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs), are substances that are used to improve any form of activity performance in humans.

Many substances, such as anabolic steroids, can be used to improve athletic performance and build muscle, which in most cases is considered cheating by organized athletic organizations. This usage is often referred to as doping. Athletic performance-enhancing substances are sometimes referred to as ergogenic aids. Cognitive performance-enhancing drugs, commonly called nootropics, are sometimes used by students to improve academic performance. Performance-enhancing substances are also used by military personnel to enhance combat performance. (wikipedia)

• • •

Look, I know the perils of Downs-only solving. I know that there is always a chance I just won't be able to put it all together. I do. And when failure happens (not often, but not rarely either), generally I recognize that it's just bad luck. My fault. Just couldn't see the answer(s) from the clue(s) and couldn't infer the Acrosses. It happens. But today ... today I'm mad because I failed on an answer that is singularly terrible: what in the world is a POKER TELL? Let me rephrase. I know precisely what a "tell" is, but how (in the world) is a POKER TELL any different from any other tell!?!?!? It's a tell. The smile is a tell. You'd call it a tell. A POKER TELL!?!?! That is a silly phrase on its face, and it's ridiculous when absolutely nothing in the clue suggests a card-playing context. [A smile, perhaps] ... that's it? Ugh. The wikipedia entry is for "Tell (poker)." Not POKER TELL (a phrase that appears nowhere in said entry). It's a term from poker, but the term is tell, not POKER TELL. POKER FACE, that's a term. POKER TELL, that's a redundancy. Bah and humbug to that answer. (Full disclosure: I also shanked 29D: "___-la-la!" ("OOH"). TRA and SHA were candidates. Never even thought of "OOH," perhaps because it's so often just the two "O"s that make up the first syllable of "Oo-la-la!" ("OO-LA-LA!" has appeared in the NYTXW as an answer 35 times over the years)).

But let's leave my failed Downs-only experiment aside [side note: my wife just walked into my office with the identical Downs-only problem I had, only she also had trouble putting together SPARE TIRE—again, not exactly Monday cluing on that one (34D: Fifth wheel)]. What about the theme? Well, it's not great. Which is to say it's super basic, very loose, and kind of ... arbitrary. LAKE TROUT? Of all the fish in the world that one might catch with a "line," we get LAKE TROUT? Not just trout, but LAKE TROUT? So weird. Especially weird when the second themer is also a two-word "L.T." phrase (LEFT TACKLE). I spent half the puzzle thinking there was some kind of L.T. theme. LEFT TACKLE is not quite as arbitrary as LAKE TROUT, but still, lots of positions on the offensive (and defensive) lines in football. COLD CALLER is yet another awkward, contrived phrase. You get a cold call, or you cold-call someone, but a COLD CALLER ... that is not a phrase I've ever used or heard used. I can imagine what (who) it is, but blargh, pretty ugly. The rest of the grid was fairly ordinary. Mostly 3-4-5s, ho hum 

Aside from the POKER TELL fiasco, the Downs-only experience was close to average—mostly easy, with a few patches I had to work through somewhat slowly. As I said, SPARE TIRE took some thought—I was staring at a whole bunch of empty squares in that one, none of which were easy to infer. Pretty sure I got it, finally, because I inferred the "T" in ATOM, and that "T" helped me see TIRE. Before that, I blanked on what the Ohio University mascot was (again, not exactly Monday fare, Ohio University not being a terribly prominent D1 sports team) (BOBCAT). I had STAGE before STAIR (22D: Part of a flight). INDIA and NEPAL have the same number of letters, so that made 46D: Country holding one side of Mount Everest briefly challenging ... oh, damn, the other country isn't INDIA, it's CHINA! Also five letters! OK, well, glad NEPAL worked out then, didn't have to struggle through the hypothetical scenario of neither NEPAL nor INDIA's working.

My favorite coincidence of the evening was that I was watching the movie While You Were Sleeping (1996) (for my Movie Club) just before solving. During the movie, my wife was wondering aloud what movies Sandra Bullock had won her Oscars for. I could only remember one: The Blind Side (2009). Turns out, she only won the one (she does have two nominations, though, the second being for Gravity (2013)). Anyway, "blind side" ended up being in the puzzle: 24A: Player protecting a QB's blind side, often. I admit, it's not a very eerie or even interesting coincidence. But now maybe you know a little more about Sandra Bullock's career, so that's something. Oh, there was one other coincidence I liked: the fact that IDAHO was adjacent to POKER TELL ... Oh, I've been to Boise, and Sun Valley, and Coeur d'Alene, but I've never been to POKER-TELL-O. I hear it's nice.

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Bitter Italian digestif / SUN 8-24-25 / Key near Fn / King in a 1978 novelty hit / Like a column starting a row, perhaps / Jane ___, longtime writer for The New Yorker / Hit 1996 movie billed as a "homespun murder story" / 2015 Kendrick Lamar anthem that won two Grammys /

Constructor: Michael Lieberman

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "Mixed Company" — hypothetical mergers where the company names are combined ("merged") and anagrammed to make a product the new company might sell:

Theme answers:

• STETHOSCOPES (23A: If HOSTESS & PETCO merged and became a medical supply company, they would sell ___)
• CABERNET SAUVIGNON (31A: If NEUTROGENA, BIC & VANS merged and opened a winery, they would sell ___)
• CINNAMON BREAD (48A: If IBM, DANNON & ACER merged and started a bakery, they would sell ___) 
• CHOPSTICKS (64A: If POST & SCHICK merged and became a kitchenware company, they would sell ___)
• PHONE CASES (67A: If EPSON & CHASE merged and became an electronics accessories company, they would sell ___)
• FLOWER GARDENS (81A: If FORD & WALGREENS merged and became a landscaping company, they would sell ___)
• GLOVE COMPARTMENTS (95A: If GMC, PETSMART & LENOVO merged and became an auto parts company, they would sell ___)
• MAGIC MARKERS (109A: If MERCK, MARS & AIG merged and became an art supplies company, they would sell ___)

Word of the Day: FERNET (20A: Bitter Italian digestif) —

Fernet (Italian: [ferˈnɛt]) is an Italian type of amaro, a bitter, aromatic spirit. Fernet is made from a number of herbs and spices which vary according to the brand, but usually include myrrh, rhubarb, chamomile, cardamom, aloe, and especially saffron, with a base of distilled grape spirits.

Fernet is usually served as a digestif after a meal but may also be served with coffee and espresso or mixed into coffee and espresso drinks. It may be served at room temperature or with ice.

The Italian liqueur Fernet-Branca, developed in 1845, has a cult following in the international bartending community and is immensely popular in Argentina. Argentina consumes more than 75% of all fernet produced globally and, due to the product's popularity, also has Fratelli Branca's only distillery outside of Italy. As it is traditionally mixed with Coke, fernet has also contributed in making Argentina one of the biggest consumers of Coca-Cola in the world. Fernet and Coke (Spanish: fernet con coca) is so ubiquitous in Argentina that it has been described as "the country's unofficial drink". This combination is called fernandito. (wikipedia)

• • •

After two very good days, we plummet. I checked out of this one early. The theme became obvious very quickly, and since it's a boring, one-note theme ... there was nothing to look forward to except some rather long anagrams. There was no cleverness in the cluing or anywhere. I'm sure finding the anagrams took some doing, but so what? That has nothing to do with how interesting the puzzle is going to be to solve, and this one wasn't interesting at all. The "products" of these hypothetical "mergers" were frequently ludicrous. What company sells FLOWER GARDENS? You don't sell FLOWER GARDENS. Just bizarre. Landscaping companies can plant gardens for you, but they don't "sell FLOWER GARDENS," that's a preposterous phrasing. And no one sells GLOVE COMPARTMENTS, either. They just ... come with your vehicle. This theme was never gonna be a winner, but those two alleged "products" took things from merely dull to aggressively absurd. Then there's the fill, which is also below average, right from the jump. This upper middle section, despite the presence of delicious FERNET, is deeply unpleasant to look at (almost as unpleasant as it was to wade through):

 

AROAR INPEN AER all crammed together, with only middling gunk like IFS REC ETS and SEERED to help out. Noted antisemite Roald DAHL, nonsensical plural TADAS, awkward past tense ASHED, all of these follow, just below this upper-middle section. The rest of the grid is somewhat better than these particularly bad patches, but "somewhat better" only puts it a little closer to average; it doesn't take it into positive territory. TAP SHOES and MONEY PIT and PITFALL are fine answers, but the last two cancel each other out because they dupe PIT (what an improbable word to dupe!). If you are super turned on by long anagrams, maybe this theme was enough for you. If you are super turned on by finishing a Sunday puzzle quickly, same. But this one left me ice cold. No, "ice cold" can be refreshing on a summer's day. It was like a room-temperature cocktail—looks OK, but the experience: deeply unpleasant.

There were no real sticking points, so I'm not sure what else to talk about. I had some trouble with the eastern part of the grid: the CARE part of SELFCARE, and Baker v. CARR (which I didn't know or forgot), and CLASS DAY (a thing which sounds thing-like but is not a thing I ever experienced). And then I had a moment of trouble figuring out why LIBELOUS wouldn't fit at 104A: Like a column starting a row, perhaps. It's LIBELLOUS with two "L"s because that's the British spelling (which "row" was supposed to clue you in to, "row" being British for "noisy disturbance; quarrel; heated argument"). The one thing this puzzle does have in common with the (superior) Fri. and Sat. puzzles is difficulty, i.e. there wasn't any. I don't need every puzzle to be a stumper, but at least one a week that's designed to test longtime solvers ... would be nice. Would be really nice. 

More more more:

• 35A: Jane ___, longtime writer for The New Yorker (MAYER) — not ringing any bells. The only unrecognizable answer in the grid for me today. She's been one of the top investigative political journalists, covering "abuses of power, threats to democracy, and corruption" for decades now, so I probably should know her name. My apologies.
• 41A: Sit tight (BIDE) — you can't see me, but I'm making a wincing "I dunno..." face. I would never substitute BIDE for "sit tight." The only way anyone uses BIDE at all is in the phrase "BIDE one's time," and you can't "sit tight your time," so ... this clue/answer equivalency feels awkward.
• 53A: King in a 1978 novelty hit (TUT) — in case you don't know, because you weren't alive, or for other reasons, Steve Martin had a big hit with a novelty song inspired by the 1970s touring exhibition of artifacts from King TUT's tomb called The Treasures of Tutankhamun. No, seriously. Here, look:

• 71A: Gent from Kent (BRIT) — also a lady from Leeds. Not sure why this clue is gendered. Is it the (sad) rhyme?
• 108A: Time-shares? (OVERLAPS) — I don't quite get this, unless it has to do with scheduling. I guess if you and I worked at a company for different periods of time, but some of that time overlapped ... that's what this clue is getting at.
• 14D: 2015 Kendrick Lamar anthem that won two Grammys ("ALRIGHT") — there's been so much Kendrick Lamar output (and drama!) in the past decade that I've completely forgotten this song, if I ever knew it. Gonna listen now and see if it sounds familiar. . . oh . . . yeah, when he gets to the "we gonna be ALRIGHT" part, now it's familiar.

• 46D: Fancy shopping mall (GALLERIA) — this seems like an oxymoron. Can any place with an Abercrombie & Fitch and a Hot Topic really be called "fancy." The Sherman Oaks GALLERIA is where they filmed parts of two classic teen movies of the '80s (both directed by women): Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) and Valley Girl (1983). Malls were great, but I dunno about "fancy." The name GALLERIA does sound fancy, though, I'll give you that.
• 51D: Ones making margin calls, for short? (EDS.) — because they write their editorial decisions (or "calls") in the "margins" of manuscripts. DELE! STET! etc.
• 64D: Key near Fn (CTRL) — got this from "Key," not really knowing what "Fn" was. It's the "Function" key. Strangely, I have one on my laptop keyboard (far lower left), but on my remote keyboard (the one I actually use) that same key just has a little globe-looking icon on it. I have never touched it. No idea what it does. Not about to find out.
• 102D: Hit 1996 movie billed as a "homespun murder story" (FARGO) — I've been chasing the high from this movie ever since it came out. One of the three best movies the Coen Bros. ever made (with No Country For Old Men and Blood Simple) (wait, I forgot Raising Arizona) (damn it, I forgot Miller's Crossing!). So, one of the five best. The Coen Bros. haven't worked together since 2018 and cinema is poorer for it (I saw Ethan Coen's new movie, Honey Don't, on Friday, so please trust me when I say "poorer") (and follow me on Letterboxd if that's something you do)

That's all. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. it was ten years ago this week that the great crossword constructor Merl Reagle died. In the age before software-assisted construction, he made impossibly witty and wacky puzzles. He was meticulous about his themes, never going to press until he'd found the perfect themer set. And no one made funnier puzzles. Even when his puzzles involved extremely groanworthy puns, you had to respect the cleverness. He was a friend and a confidante, and the fact that he would write me from time to time to commiserate about puzzle stuff made me, frankly, high as a kite. He gave me confidence. I miss him. And the puzzle world is poorer for his absence.  

[me & Merl at the Brooklyn Marriott, sometime in the early 2010's (no, I don't know why I'm making that face)]

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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