Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle

Constructor: Tracy Gray and Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Easy (5:50)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Donna SHALALA (41A: Congresswoman who once served in the U.S. cabinet) —

Donna Edna Shalala (Arabic: دونا إدنا شلالا‎; /ʃəˈleɪlə/ shə-LAY-lə; born February 14, 1941) is an American politician and academic serving as the U.S. Representative for Florida's 27th congressional district since 2019. A member of the Democratic Party, she previously served as the 18th United States Secretary of Health and Human Services under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 2001. (wikipedia)

• • •

This is a completely acceptable Saturday puzzle. No real wows, but not much garbage either. Sturdy throughout. The highs were higher and the lows were lower yesterday, but I liked yesterday's puzzle somewhat more—it hit more than it missed. This one rarely misses, but only CRAZY BUSY and RUMOR HAS IT really made me sit up and take notice. The rest was just fine. Oh, I also liked WAKANDA. It's hard for me, specifically, when I finish a puzzle like this because I just don't have much to say, one way or the other. It's nice to have something *remarkable* to work with, even if what is remarkable is that the puzzle stinks. With a kind of beige / taupe / ecru puzzle like this, I was more aware of how I was solving than of the specific quality of the puzzle. For instance, starting Saturdays is almost always tough, and this was no exception. First pass at the NW yielded a few things, but nothing that allowed me to put it all together. I guessed ZIN correctly, but didn't trust it, and since I also didn't trust its neighbor, ARID, I just decided to abandon that corner and move on. I did, however, have enough sense to see the "VI" toward the end of 14A: Look down on something and write in the word VIEW. Seemed probable. Of course my next move was dropping WEASELS down from the "W" in VIEW at 15D: Spineless sorts, metaphorically (WET RAGS), so even though VIEW was the right move, it had a bad initial outcome. Sometimes even your good moves turn out bad.

What I really noticed was the power of the CRUCIAL answer (which, today, was not, in fact, CRUCIAL). Today's crucial answer was a totally banal one: ATTACH (10D: Online action symbolized by a paper clip). I don't think of ATTACHing as inherently "online," but ... I guess it is. I attach things to emails, emails are "online." I guess I think of "online" as referring to something that happens (primarily) in my web browser. Annnnnyway, I ATTACH things regularly to emails so the paper clip icon was familiar to me. Writing in ATTACH gave me the first letters of all the 4s in the NE, and that helped me knock them off 1-2-3. Which then meant that the long Downs could fall easily as well. Then it was easy to back GOATHERD into the middle of the grid, sweep down to the SW, then back up to the formerly pesky NW, which proved far less pesky this time. RAKE gave me the "K" to get down into the SE via WAKANDA, and a correct guess of BALLADS allowed me to come at the SE from the other side as well. Some trouble with NAPA, but otherwise made pretty short work of the SE and ended up with a pretty swift under-6-minute solve time. When I look back over the grid, or over my print-out of the grid, the part I like most is actually the two wrong answers I had, which I have written in the margins, one over the other: YOGA WEASELS. Now *that* is a gang I would join. (I had YOGA for 1D: ___ pants (CAMO)).

Five things:

4D: Cab alternative (ZIN)— yes, my brain went first to transportation, but if you've been doing these long enough, the wine meaning of "cab" will shout at you pretty quick
23A: Name that's an anagram of both 16- and 18-Across (ETTA) — not (at all) a big fan of this kind of clue, which is essentially content-free. It's annoying enough to be sent around the grid to figure out answers; to have no actual clue beyond "anagram" is very disappointing
33A: Binary code snippets (BYTES) — for some reason, I wasn't sure about the "Y"; thought it might be "I." Something about bits and bytes, I don't know. Luckily, getting the "Y" from TYPE A wasn't hard (30D: Like go-getters)
37A: Unit of magnetic flux (WEBER) — the fragmentary remains of my college Physics I class still clatter around my brain, so even though I couldn't tell you anything very definitive about physics, I still have a decent physics vocabulary storehouse, and with crosswords, that is often enough (fun fact: the only award I received in college was for my Physics I class, in which I got the highest grade—this is what happens when Physics is your respite from your three 200pp/week literature classes).
48A: Mount near Olympus (OSSA)— considered ETNA, but that's on Sicily, which ... honestly, I don't know where "Olympus" is, but I'm pretty sure it's in Greece. Four-letter mountains from ancient literature = ETNA or OSSA (if it's three letters, you're probably looking at IDA) (if five, MT. IDA) (IDA is on Crete, btw) (also, Mount OSSA is the highest point in Tasmania ... you know, in case that ever comes up)

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Byron Walden

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (9:48)

THEME: none— puzzle has a title ("Wide-Open Spaces") but there's no actual theme; the title just describes the amount of white space in the grid, i.e. it's a low word-count puzzle, for a Sunday. That's ... the "theme"

Word of the Day: LUMIÈRES (68D: Group of 18th-century thinkers that included Voltaire and Rousseau) —

The Lumières (literally in English: Enlighteners) was a cultural, philosophical, literary and intellectual movement of the second half of the 18th century, originating in France and spreading throughout Europe. It included philosophers such as Baruch Spinoza, Denis Diderot, Pierre Bayle and Isaac Newton. Over time it came to mean the Siècle des Lumières, in English the Age of Enlightenment.
Members of the movement saw themselves as a progressive élite, and battled against religious and political persecution, fighting against what they saw as the irrationality, arbitrariness, obscurantism and superstition of the previous centuries. They redefined the study of knowledge to fit the ethics and aesthetics of their time. Their works had great influence at the end of the 18th century, in the American Declaration of Independence and the French Revolution.
This intellectual and cultural renewal by the Lumières movement was, in its strictest sense, limited to Europe, and was almost exclusively a development of the ideas of Renaissance humanism. These ideas were well understood in Europe, but beyond France the idea of "enlightenment" had generally meant a light from outside, whereas in France it meant a light coming from within oneself.
In the most general terms, in science and philosophy, the Enlightenment aimed for the triumph of reason over faith and belief; in politics and economics, the triumph of the bourgeois over nobility and clergy. (wikipedia)

• • •

I can never evaluate Sunday themelesses fairly because I just don't like them. It feels like cheating. Of course you can put a lot of snazzy fill in a themeless Sunday—you have a Huge Grid. There's so much wide-open space that there is, for me, a feeling of formlessness and incoherence. I'm very interested in what kind of cool things a constructor can do in the limited space of 15x15. Open it up to 21x21 and even fantastic fill just doesn't land. It doesn't feel meaningful or special when it's done like this. It's a big blur. Byron is a very good constructor, so my problem really is with the form, per se, more than with the execution here. I finished this puzzle and then went in the other room and five minutes later couldn't remember much of anything about it. Even looking it over now (an hour or so later), I barely remember solving it, or what I felt, or ... anything. There's lots of stuff I've never heard of, but who cares? I worked around it and finished in a faster-than-average time. That's the other thing that probably makes this puzzle a disappointment—I'm used to themelesses being tough. This was like a giant themeless Wednesday. Pass.

I do remember getting THE VAULT and thinking, "really, THE?" Let's see ... Had real trouble at BOSSES (30D: End-of-level challenges in video games) / CONGO REDS (34A: Dyes that can be used as pH indicators), largely because I had heard of neither. BOSSES in particular is brutal if you have no idea what that is. --SSES and ... nothing. Thank god those crosses were gettable / inferrable, though I had real trouble with the "B" from BARTERER because when "?"s are appended to clues that end in quotation marks, for some reason those clues don't register in my brain as "?" clues (i.e. as tricky / wordplay clues). So I was thinking of 30A: One who might say "Your money's no good here"? (BARTERER) as something like ... "treater" or "footer of the bill" or something like that. But no. Bartering is a way to get goods without using money. Got it. This whole cluster should've torpedoed me, and might have in a 15x15 grid, but here, I just worked around it and sussed it out in very little time. Even the punches that landed didn't do much.

Trouble: how to spell HAGAN (went with HAGEN at first) (86D: Former North Carolina senator Kay ___). Also trouble: DÉCOLLETÉ (64D: Having a low neckline, as a dress). I think I know the word "decolletage," which is, like the bit around the neckline on a woman's blouse? Dress? Whoops, nope, it's actually the part of her torso *exposed* by the "low neckline." Well. OK, good to know. ANSWERER feels weak and FIZZER feels even weaker, but mainly there were no problems with this grid. I guess I was not keen on the plug for KENT CIGARETTES (22A: R.J. Reynolds product that once sponsored "The Dick Van Dyke Show"), or the massive generality of EASTERN AUSTRALIA (15D: Victorian home?), which is certainly a geographical area, but then so is SOUTHERN IDAHO, and I doubt anyone thinks that's crossworthy. But still, this puzzle is mostly fine. It has many nice answers. I just don't think they're as nice as I would if I encountered them in a more meaningful (because stricter) 15x15 context. EXTRA LARGE PIZZA is 15 ... if it means that much to you, you can get it in a F/Sat grid.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Daily Beast has a daily (!) puzzle now, written by veteran puzzle pro Matt Gaffney. It's 10x10, gets harder as the week goes on, and features lots of timely, news-based answers. Check it out!

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Constructor: Christina Iverson

Relative difficulty: Easy? Medium? People seem to find it easy, but I'd never heard of one of the themers, and therefore I was Way over my average ...

THEME: MONOPOLY tokens (64A: Game whose tokens have included the starts of 16-, 20-, 26-, 49- and 55-Across) — themers start with tokens (former and current)

Theme answers:

BOOT CAMP (16A: Where Army recruits go to start training)
HAT TRICK (20A: Thre goals by the same player)
THIMBLERIG (26A: Shell game)
IRON MAIDEN (49A: British heavy metal band named for a torture device)
DOG TIRED (55A: All tuckered out)

Word of the Day: THIMBLERIG (26A: Shell game) —

The shell game (also known as thimblerig, three shells and a pea, the old army game) is portrayed as a gambling game, but in reality, when a wager for money is made, it is almost always a confidence trick used to perpetrate fraud. In confidence trick slang, this swindle is referred to as a short-con because it is quick and easy to pull off. The shell game is related to the cups and balls conjuring trick, which is performed purely for entertainment purposes without any purported gambling element. (wikipedia)

• • •

What's stunning is that this theme seems not to have been done before (???). It is the oldest-feeling theme I can imagine, and yet a cursory search of the databases isn't turning up much. I guess it doesn't matter if it has been done; it *feels* like it's been done (to death), and wasn't really interesting to me at all. None of the themers are particularly interesting, except THIMBLERIG, which is "interesting" only insofar as I've never seen that word before in my life (or, if I have, forgot it immediately). Very very very familiar with "shell game." No idea who calls it THIMBLERIG. A Victorian bootblack, maybe? So the theme was not terrible, just stale-feeling (to me). Also slightly dated, as the boot and the thimble both got ... the boot a few years back. The fill also feels dated. Very. Nothing from this century. Even ICEPOPS strikes me as old-fashioned. Lots of super-common short stuff, and the four 7+ non-theme answers don't add much life. In fact, they pretty conspicuously add death, in the form of SHARK OIL, clued as a cosmetics ingredient, which ... why would you do this? Why would you put this in your grid? Can you really not build that NE corner without referring to the slaughter of endangered species for the making of medically dubious "health" and "beauty" products. I mean, you *know* it's gross. You put "controversial" in there to try to cover your ass. Boo. Serious boo. On Mondays, as on every day, I like my sharks alive and swimming and my THIMBLERIGs, whatever those are, non-existent.

There was some THIMBLERIG-adjacent stuff that screwed me up too. Just couldn't process "I RULE!" (a crossword answer whose time has come and gone) without the "I" (which was in THIMBLERIG). And then I couldn't figure out GAUDY (38A: Ostentatiously ornamented). Started out with SHOWY, and then when I got the "G" from TOGAS, I completely and utterly forgot how to spell GAUDY. This is what I wanted: GAWDY. Like BAWDY. Lawdy lawdy. Oh, and U.S. MAP also took me a few beats (8A: Many an electoral chart, in brief). Brain registered only "chart" and wanted something like "... pie?" Hope for something more modern and snappier tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Trent H. Evans

Relative difficulty: Easy (3:07)

THEME: Tom Swifties— ugh, it's a thing, look it up

Theme answers:

WITH RELISH (17A: "This hot dog is absolute perfection!" said Tom ___)
CRYPTICALLY (24A: "You're making a grave mistake," said Tom ___)
LACKADAISICALLY (38A: "I can't find a flower fo 'She loves me, she loves me not," said Tom ___)
OFF-HANDEDLY (47A: "I've learned my lesson about feeding the tigers," said Tom ___)
MERCIFULLY (61A: "Many thanks for your help in Paris," said Tom ___)

Word of the Day: DDT (46A: Insecticide whose 1972 ban led to the comeback of the bald eagle) —

Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, commonly known as DDT, is a colorless, tasteless, and almost odorless crystalline chemical compound, an organochlorine. Originally developed as an insecticide, it became infamous for its environmental impacts. DDT was first synthesized in 1874 by the Austrian chemist Othmar Zeidler. DDT's insecticidal action was discovered by the Swiss chemist Paul Hermann Müller in 1939. DDT was used in the second half of World War II to control malaria and typhus among civilians and troops. Müller was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1948 "for his discovery of the high efficiency of DDT as a contact poison against several arthropods".
By October 1945, DDT was available for public sale in the United States. Although it was promoted by government and industry for use as an agricultural and household pesticide, there were also concerns about its use from the beginning. Opposition to DDT was focused by the 1962 publication of Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring. It cataloged environmental impacts that coincided with widespread use of DDT in agriculture in the United States, and it questioned the logic of broadcasting potentially dangerous chemicals into the environment with little prior investigation of their environmental and health effects. The book cited claims that DDT and other pesticides had been shown to cause cancer and that their agricultural use was a threat to wildlife, particularly birds. Although Carson never directly called for an outright ban on the use of DDT, its publication was a seminal event for the environmental movement and resulted in a large public outcry that eventually led, in 1972, to a ban on DDT's agricultural use in the United States. A worldwide ban on agricultural use was formalized under the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, but its limited and still-controversial use in disease vector control continues, because of its effectiveness in reducing malarial infections, balanced by environmental and other health concerns.
Along with the passage of the Endangered Species Act, the United States ban on DDT is a major factor in the comeback of the bald eagle (the national bird of the United States) and the peregrine falcon from near-extinction in the contiguous United States. (wikipedia)

• • •

This puzzle doesn't deserve a review, so I'm not gonna give it one. Well, not a full one, anyway. Here's the deal: Tom Swifties ... are an old thing. They are in corny old "joke" books, probably, and they are definitely on websites (over and over and over again). In the end, what you have are ... adverbs. Well, one adverbial phrase, and then adverbs. That's it. You (yes you) can go to a Tom Swifties page on the internet, just find a bunch of adverbs that will fit symmetrically in a grid, and bam, you have a "theme" now, congrats. There is literally nothing to this. This one, though, is so very bad because you don't have to go any further than The "Examples" of Tom Swifties on the "Tom Swifty" Wikipedia Page to find THREE FIFTHS of the themer set!!!

It's all so shabby. It should've been rejected. I MEAN, it should've been rejected on the premise alone (it's a hackneyed wordplay phenomenon that you can spin out endlessly). The fact that the constructor barely went past the wikipedia page for answers ... I dunno, man. The fill is mediocre. The long Downs are just fine. But this "theme" is a crime. If you don't think so, then by all means, flood the damn NYTXW with your Tom Swifty submissions. They are NOT HARD TO CONSTRUCT. Any experienced constructor could churn out several in an evening. The hardest part would be finding a symmetrical adverb set, and that ... isn't hard. Just go here and Get Started! (I'm joking, though, please don't do this).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Natan Last, Andy Kravis and The J.A.S.A. Crossword Class

Relative difficulty: Easy (4:01 at a trotting pace)

THEME: 1 word, 2 words— three-word phrases where the second two words, combined, are spelled the same as the first word ... so that in the grid, every themer looks like it's just an eight-letter word repeated:

Theme answers:

BRIEFEST BRIE FEST (18A: French cheese tasting that lasts only a minute?)
MUSTACHE MUST ACHE (28A: "That handlebar has gotta hurt!")
HEATHENS HEAT HENS (51A: Headline about a pagan rotisserie shop?)
FLAGRANT FLAG RANT (68A: Screed about Old Glory that goes too far?)

Word of the Day: Buzzards BAY (55A: Massachusetts' Buzzards ___)—

Buzzards Bay is a bay of the Atlantic Ocean adjacent to the U.S. state of Massachusetts. It is approximately 28 miles (45 kilometers) long by 8 miles (12 kilometers) wide. It is a popular destination for fishing, boating, and tourism. Since 1914, Buzzards Bay has been connected to Cape Cod Bay by the Cape Cod Canal. In 1988, under the Clean Water Act, the Environmental Protection Agencyand the State of Massachusetts designated Buzzards Bay to the National Estuary Program, as "an estuary of national significance" that is threatened by pollution, land development, or overuse. (wikipedia)

• • •

JAYBIRD (22A)

It's a simple idea, kind of a wordplay standard (i.e. the idea words can be broken apart to form other words), but rather than being lifted from some website of prefab answers, the group of theme answers involved here are carefully chosen, and have common properties that link them together, elevating the theme and giving it a certain amount of consistency and structural elegance. They're all 16, to start with, which means that they're (apparently) the same 8-letter word twice. Then, through the magic of wackiness ("?"-style cluing), the second 8-letter word turns out to actual be two words ... and each time, those two words are two 4-letter words, which means that each time the first word is reparsed as two words, it is split precisely in half. 8 + (4 + 4). No 8 + (5 + 3)s, no 8 + (2 + 6)s. An 8 and two 4s, every time. So yes, the theme is light, but there's an architectural preciseness about it that I like. I kind of wish the parsing made the second half clank more rather than less; that is, I like MUSTACHE MUST ACHE, which *really* changes sound from first half to last half. HEATHENS HEAT HENS similarly involves a big sound change (elimination of the "TH" sound). BRIEFEST BRIE FEST, on the other hand, is a little on-the-nose (and I'm not entirely sure that the latter part wouldn't be spelled as one word rather than two, since "-fest" is a suffix, technically, e.g. "gabfest,""lovefest," etc.). FLAGRANT FLAG RANT changes (pronunciation-wise) only in the vowels, though when I sit here saying it out loud (in my kitchen, to myself, like a weirdo), it does sound pretty different. All's I'm saying is that I like when the reparsing involves a *jarring* repronunciation. There's a corollary here to the Wackiness Rule—bigger is better. Go big or don't bother. Anyway, overall, this all worked fine for me. There's evidence of craft involved today. Nice change from whatever was going on yesterday.

The fill is also light years better than yesterday's, despite a preponderance of short stuff. Again, that's evidence of craft. Care. Attention to small details that no one is ever going to praise you for ... but those details absolutely matter to solvers' overall enjoyment, whether they're conscious of them or not. The fill is *clean* and occasionally snazzy. I'm never gonna cheer for abbrs. but as abbrs. go, IVF is a good one (11D: Modern reproductive procedure: Abbr.). It's, well, modern, like the clue says. Also modern—MERCH (33D: Concert tees and the like). Short answers can be interesting and fresh! And if the bulk of the short stuff is simply solid, woo hoo. I say "simply"—it's actually hard (and underappreciated) work to get all the short stuff (or the vast majority of it) to come out clean. I've complained about the THE in answers before, but THE ARMY isn't bad, as definite article-containing answers go. Annoyed by the clue on 29D: Anagram and antonym of 34-Down (UNTIE), but only because it makes me have to go look elsewhere in the grid for info, which I Never like. But, as those highly annoying types of clues go, it's fine, actually. I had the TABLA (48D: Small Indian drum) as a TABOR, which ... what is that? June TABOR is a folk singer ... hmmm ... (looks up TABOR) ... hey! It's also a drum! Oh good, now I don't feel so bad:

: a small drum with one head of soft calfskin used to accompany a pipe or fife played by the same person (merriam-webster.com)

Had real trouble getting HYBRID, since I took [Animal crossing] to mean "a place where animals cross the road, possibly to get to the other side." That was probably the point of that clue. But otherwise, no problems here. Simple, snappy fun.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. J.A.S.A. (Jewish Association for Services of the Aged) in NYC offers a crossword construction class on a regular basis; this puzzle is a product of one of those classes. For more info on the organization, including how you can donate (they're doing good work during this pandemic), please go here. Thanks.

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Constructor: Andrew Kingsley

Relative difficulty: Easy (untimed)

THEME: RED CROSS (37D: Organization with three Nobel Peace Prizes ... or what "corrects" the answer to each of the starred clues) — theme answers appear to contain incorrect colors, but the "correct" color is arrived at by the addition of (the letter string) "RED," which CROSSes each "wrong" color, and thus "corrects" it:

Theme answers:

16A: *Sycophant (GREEN-NOSER) (i.e. "brown-noser"— GREEN + "RED" (from PREDATOR) = brown)
27A: *Classic gin-and-grenadine cocktail (WHITE LADY) (i.e. "pink lady"— WHITE + "RED" (from FREDDY) = pink)
44A: *Military medal (BLUE HEART) (i.e. "Purple Heart"— BLUE + "RED" (from REDEEM) = purple)
59A: *Annual Florida football game (YELLOW BOWL) (i.e. "Orange Bowl"— YELLOW + "RED" (from REDO) = orange)

Word of the Day: EDNA Lewis, "The Taste of Country Cooking" writer (48A) —

Edna Lewis (April 13, 1916 – February 13, 2006) was a renowned American chef, teacher, and author who helped refine the American view of Southern cooking. She championed the use of fresh, in season ingredients and characterized Southern food as fried chicken (pan, not deep-fried), pork, and fresh vegetables – most especially greens. She wrote and co-wrote four books which covered Southern cooking and life in a small community of freed slaves and their descendants. (wikipedia)

• • •

Very much liked this theme. I liked this theme while I was solving and I double-liked it when I got to the revealer. "Good revealer," I have written in the margins of this puzzle. It's a revealer I *probably* should've seen coming, but I don't tend to think ahead like that when I'm solving. My thought process was something along the lines of "oh, this first set of circles is RED, 'cause red + green = brown ... oh, they're *all* RED, that makes this a lot easier, but still enjoyable ... ohhhh, RED CROSS, of course. Good one." The theme was easy to pick up and, once picked up, very easy to complete. Knowing the themers would all have colors in them was a huge help, and luckily I was familiar with all the theme answers, even the "pink lady," which is probably (no, certainly) the least commonly known of the bunch (though I don't think of it as obscure). Good idea, good execution, good revealer—as far as the theme goes, this one very much succeeds.

The fill was certainly less enjoyable, and I don't know if this is because the grid was under a good deal of thematic pressure from the "RED" element, or if, you know, it just wasn't as polished as it could be. That ECOLAW IDES EER bit up top is rough—I have three frowny faces in the margins there.. And the THE in THE NBA is pretty horrid, especially coming on the heels of yesterday's THE ARMY—the arbitrary THE-ing of answers feels slightly out of control right now, and I'd like it to stop. THENBA is likely to be one of the more significant time-sucks in this puzzle for solvers, and it's not a great feeling to find out that you've been struggling because the puzzle decided to throw in a random THE for no good reason.

Otherwise, there's not a lot of cringey stuff, but a lot of it is on the overly-common side, for sure. I can't believe we haven't retired EDEL, which is paradigmatic crosswordese. Unless you solve crosswords regularly and/or are really really Really into Henry James (whom EDEL biographized over five frickin' volumes), this is not a name you're gonna know. He died in the late '90s, and was never a household name to begin with. He just has Good Letters (seriously, if you construct, there will come a time when you're like, "Damn, EDEL would work perfectly here ..."). Whenever I see his name now (which is rare these days, thank you, constructors) I think "oh come on." It's a mothball answer for sure. But here, at least, there seems to be a good reason for his appearance, i.e. he's right in the thick of a color crossing; the way the grid is built, it would be very hard to replace EDEL with anything else. So I guess if you're the constructor, you offer up EDEL as a sacrifice to OOXTEPLERNON, the God of Bad Short Fill, and hope that He blesses you with an otherwise successful puzzle. Today, I think the sacrifice was probably worth it. Full disclosure, though: I am likely to be warmly disposed to any puzzle that is willing, with a straight face, to refer to a Dryden translation of Virgil as "famous" (1D: Classic work famously translated by John Dryden). As I wrote in the answer to that clue (AENEID), I looked up from my comfy chair to my own copy of said translation on my bookshelf and was well pleased (didn't see any EDELs there, though, alas ...)

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. 42A: Alternative to O is AB, not TYPE AB. Alternative to TYPE O is TYPE AB. Randomly throwing "type" in the answer absolutely destroys clue/answer equivalency. It would be like if you clued THENBA as [NFL alternative]. If one is being posited as an "alternative" to the other, then the phrasing needs to be parallel—no gratuitously added words. Boooooo! That is all. Wait, one more thing: the plural of elk is elk, not ELKS (57D: Cougars' prey).That is all.

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Constructor: Hal Moore

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (maybe more Medium) (5:30, first thing in a.m.)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: ROSE ROYCE (49A: Soul group that did the soundtrack for "Car Wash") —

Rose Royce is an American soul and R&B group. They are best known for several hit singles during the 1970s including "Car Wash", "I Wanna Get Next to You", "I'm Going Down", "Wishing on a Star", and "Love Don't Live Here Anymore". (wikipedia)

• • •

Really liked this grid. The "?"-cluing game was way off today—didn't like any of them, felt like there were too many of them (in the south, anyway), and, well, ECOLI is a weirdly bleak answer to get cheeky with (25A: Cause to recall?)—but the grid itself was chock full of fun stuff. I might be riding a little high on knowing ROSE ROYCE and consequently playing ROSE ROYCE in my head for half of the solve. I wonder how hard this puzzle breaks, difficulty-wise, depending on whether you know who ROSE ROYCE are or not. If you *don't* know it, seems like you'd need virtually every letter from crosses. And since one of those crosses is also a not-necessarily-household name from pop culture (DONAGHY), I can see things getting mucky in there (46D: Jack ___, Alec Baldwin's "30 Rock" role). But when you know the proper names, and crash through them, *and* enjoy them irl, then the solving pleasure factor all of a sudden goes zooom. Not even the horrific-on-every-level YACHTIE could completely eliminate the high I got from the better answers in this grid (43D: Marina frequenter, informally).

It was not easy going at first, though. I thought it was going to be a slog after I made my first pass at the Downs in the NW (which is how I typically approach a grid like this, with long Acrosses up top). That first pass yielded me precisely one solid answer: WES Unseld (5D: Basketball Hall-of-Famer Unseld). So yet again I was a beneficiary of knowing a proper name ... sometimes things just fall your way; I would be very sympathetic to any solver who was like "f*** all these names!"—WES Unseld and ROSE ROYCE are both solid '70s answers, and not everyone remembers / was alive during the '70s. Anyway, not sure WES felt like such a huge get early on, since he was all I had. But then I turned to the long Acrosses up there and EVIL EMPIRE was a gimme (another benefit of being oldish and having lived through a bygone era) (15A: The U.S.S.R., to Reagan). With EVIL EMPIRE in place, the NW got a lot easier. Once I got out of that corner, there weren't many serious hold-ups after that. The NW often feels the hardest to me because that's where I typically start, so I have no toeholds. But looking back now, I think it's actually empirically the hardest, today, EVIL EMPIRE aside. The clues on every Down from 6- to 10- is at least ambiguous if not downright tricky. But once out of there, smooth sailing. Oh, hey, I knew "YAKETY SAX" too, and I'm beginning to realize that my age may have something to do with my sailing (if not yachting) through this (26A: Instrumental that might recall a blooper reel). "YAKETY SAX" is familiar to me from "The Benny Hill Show," which aired ... well, a while ago.

["YAKETY SAX" is the closing credits song]

All these pop culture answers are *right* over the plate for me. There's a boomer/Xer quality to the puzzle. I guess I don't think showing your age (whatever your age is) is a bad thing. This one manages to feel very '70s/'80s without, to me, feeling dreary and bygone in that lazy, crosswordese-ish kind of way. Helps that the grid is clean and not ICKY. I enjoyed seeing PATRIARCHY, which, coming from the NYTXW, has a certain aptness to it, but ... at least today, it's crossing DRUG.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Wyna Liu and Erik Agard

Relative difficulty: Mediumish (8-ish + find-the-vowel-error-in-the-foreign-word!)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Tyr (40A: It's named for the Norse god of war: Abbr. => TUE.) —

Týr (/tɪər/;^[1] Old Norse: Týr, pronounced [tyːr]), Tíw (Old English), and Ziu (Old High German) is a god in Germanic mythology. Stemming from the Proto-Germanic deity *Tīwaz and ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European chief deity *Dyeus, little information about the god survives beyond Old Norse sources. Due to the etymology of the god's name and the shadowy presence of the god in the extant Germanic corpus, some scholars propose that Týr may have once held a more central place among the deities of early Germanic mythology.
Týr is the namesake of the Tiwaz rune (ᛏ), a letter of the runic alphabet corresponding to the Latin letter T. By way of the process of interpretatio germanica, the deity is the namesake of Tuesday ('Týr's day') in Germanic languages, including English. Interpretatio romana, in which Romans interpreted other gods as forms of their own, generally renders the god as Mars, the ancient Roman war god, and it is through that lens that most Latin references to the god occur. [...]
The modern English weekday name Tuesday means 'Tíw's day', referring to the Old English extension of the deity. Tuesday derives from Old English tisdæi (before 1200), which develops from an earlier tywesdæi (1122), which itself extends from Old English Tīwesdæg (before 1050). The word has cognates in numerous other Germanic languages, including Old Norse týsdagr, Frisian tīesdi, Old High German zīostag, Middle High German zīestac, and Alemannic zīstac. All of these forms derive from a Proto-Germanic weekday name meaning 'day of Tīwaz', itself a result of interpretatio germanica of Latin dies Martis (meaning 'day of Mars'). This attests to an early Germanic identification of *Tīwaz with Mars.

• • •

Really nice grid. I struggled some with the cluing, which seemed to me, at times, too clever for its own good—so clever, that is, that I still wasn't sure I quite understood it after I got the answer. Super "thinky" clues are one way to add difficulty to a puzzle, but those really have to land for me or else I get irked. Take O'ER (31D: Shortened again), which I couldn't get at all except through crosses, and only after having it all in place did I see "oh ... so it is a 'shortened' form of a word that means'again' ... well, ok then," which, as you might guess, is a somewhat less electrifying response than "wow" or "aha!" And the clue on LEGAL LIMIT still has me slightly puzzled where grammar is concerned (8D: Bound to follow). "Bound" is a noun here? And I have to "follow" it in the sense of "observe" or "obey" it? Who am I in this scenario? What is the context? You wouldn't really say you have to "follow" a LEGAL LIMIT. The wording is really iffy, and all just so you can get this "haha you think it's a verb phrase but it's a noun phrase" effect. Again, if you pull this trick (a time-honored trick that, in theory, is just fine), make sure it *lands*. Not a big fan of "we made this hard by making the cluing preposterously awkward." That said, there wasn't too too much of this. This is a very snazzy grid with a lot of sparkly colloquial phrases ("ROGER THAT,""IT'S NOT A RACE,""CHECK, PLEASE, MADE IT WEIRD, etc.), and though I had a few bad experiences with clues, my dominant feelings were positive.

["They call it instant justice when it's past the LEGAL LIMIT..."]

I had the bad fortune of coming to the very end and having two bad squares—one an error, the other a giant question mark. Let's take the error first—I was super-psyched to know the answer to 36A: Festival observed every October 31 to November 2 right off the bat. I was far less psyched to spell the first word of the answer wrong. I wrote in DIO DE LOS MUERTOS because, not being a Spanish speaker, I get the gender of words all confused in my head, so DIA looks feminine to me, but it's really masculine, and sadly today that meant that my brain just decided to make the word look more masucline to my eye by taking away the "A" and replacing it with an "O" (please do not ask for logic from my brain, it will rarely oblige). This meant I had CLOSE SHOVES at 3D: Narrow escapes (CLOSE SHAVES), and while I definitely squinted at that, I figured it was some colloquial expression I just wasn't aware of (I would use "close call" a million times before I'd use "close shave," so even though I know the phrase "close shave," it just didn't shout at me). Then there was the MILL / LESTE crossing. Well, LESTE ... every letter a guess. Never heard of it. Timor, yes, East Timor, for sure, Timor-LESTE, yipes. I managed to get the -ESTE done but MILL ... you could not write a worse clue *for me* for MILL if you tried (28A: Machine shop essential). I'm not *entirely* sure even what a "machine shop" is. I get the idea that it is industrial and people use machines to make ... things ... for ... industry? But to me a MILL is where you grind grain. Or pepper. Or maybe you cut logs into lumber. The "machine shop" idea of "MILLing," totally foreign to me. So I wrote in the "L" there only because literally nothing else made sense. And so because of foreign vowel troubles and an obscure-place-name / something-way-out-of-my-wheelhouse crossing, I almost didn't finish. Phew. It was a very close shove.

Is there a paradigmatic KALE SALAD? (6A: Dish often topped with goat cheese and cranberries) I've had a bunch of them, and eat them at home on a reasonably regular basis, but goat cheese and cranberries? I mean, I might put those on any salad, but ... they don't scream KALE SALAD to me. What else? Had RURAL before RHODE (45D: R, in a postal abbreviation), and GEAR UP before SUIT UP (27D: Get ready for action). No additional problems.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Andrew Chaikin

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (9-something to fill grid in correctly ... then 5 minutes to read the novel-length notes that were way way way way way less interesting than any novel I've ever read (and I read a *lot* of mysteries) ... then 10 minutes to grumble about how there's no way I'm gonna take the time to figure this stupid thing out ... then about two minutes to figure it out (once I actually sat down with the "Notes" and the grid, ugh)

Puzzle Notes:

"This crossword contains a whodunit: "Thank you for coming, Inspector," said Lady McGuffin. "The famed McGuffin Diamond has been stolen from my study! The eight members of the staff had a costume party tonight--it has to be one of them: the butler, driver, cook, baker, page, porter, barber or carpenter. They have all been confined to their respective rooms around the parlor [center of the grid]." Can you determine who stole the diamond ... and where it is now? // In the print version of this puzzle, nine sections of the grid are shaded: most of the central area, and eight large regions surrounding the center--the upper left, upper middle, upper right, middle left, middle right, lower left, lower middle and lower right."

THEME:"The Mystery of McGuffin Manor" — a mystery puzzle involving the theft of a diamond ... read the above "Notes" and then follow the weird-ass "clues" in the grid and then solve the mystery, I guess:

Theme answers:

As you inspect each room, you find staff members dressed as APTLY NAMED CELEBRITIES (25A)
They're all WEARING NAME TAGS, so you can easily identify them (39A)
In the study, you find that the thief accidentally left behind an APPLE SWEATSHIRT (85A)
"You caught me!," says the thief, who then admits: "The diamond isn't here in my room, but it's hidden in THE ONE TO THE WEST OF HERE" (102A)

Soooooo..... the "staff members" / suspects described in the Puzzle Notes (i.e. the butler, driver, cook, baker, page, porter, barber or carpenter) are all actually last names of celebrities, who are clued as [Suspect #1] thru [Suspect #8]. So [Suspect #1] (28A) is COLE so that's COLE"porter," [Suspect #2] (50A) is GERARD so that's GERARD Butler, etc. Annnnnnyway, the "cook" is Apple CEO TIM Cook (65A: Suspect #3), and since the thief left behind an APPLE SWEATSHIRT (sidenote: I cannot get over how dumb a theme answer that is), we can assume that TIM Cook is the thief, and since he left the diamond not in his own "room," but in THE ONE TO THE WEST OF HERE (sidenote: seriously, wtf with these themers...), we should look not in the section where TIM is (the east) but to the "room" west of there (i.e. the "parlor," or middle section), and there you will find the McGuffin Diamond, in that you will find MCGUFFIN spelled out in diamond shape, starting with the "M" at the end of SUM (63A) and proceeding clockwise through all the letters adjacent to the little black "+" sign at the center of the grid:

Full list of suspects:

ELLEN Page (10D)
TIKI Barber (13D)
TIM Cook (guilty!) (65A)
CHET Baker (101A)
KAREN Carpenter (115A)
MINNIE Driver (114A)
GERARD Butler (50A)
COLE Porter (28A)

Word of the Day: SEA ROOM (81D: Space to maneuver a ship) —

n.
Unobstructed space at sea adequate for maneuvering a ship.

• • •

OK, so, see, the thing about mysteries is that there is a narrative. Characters are developed. Their identities, jobs, behavior, all that matters. If they're well written, you get invested, even when you know the plot is contrived. There's ... story. A reason to care. There's ... something. As opposed to this puzzle, where there is nothing. This is a nothing. It's not even a good parody, in that it doesn't seem to understand the terms of what it's parodying. First of all, here's the wikipedia definition of McGuffin: "In fiction, a MacGuffin (sometimes McGuffin) is an object, device, or event that is necessary to the plot and the motivation of the characters, but insignificant, unimportant, or irrelevant in itself." But here the alleged McGuffin is all that there is. It is the central visual motif. It is the opposite of a McGuffin. In a real mystery, the McGuffin is the thing everyone's chasing so that The Story Can Be Propelled Forward And We Can Learn Things About The Characters. The "characters" here ... are totally irrelevant. TIKI Barber ... sits there. In ... what room is that? Oh, that's the other thing: does this puzzle think it's modeled on the board game "Clue"???! Because the whole "room" thing is totally "Clue" ... and yet in "Clue" there is a murder ("so and so, with the such and such weapon, in the something room," you might guess). Here', there's just a dumb theft. And a .... sweatshirt, was it? Sweatshirt!?!? What in the godawful arbitrary hell is that? It could have been APPLE [anything] but we get ... sweatshirt? And what does WEARING NAME TAGS even mean? Is that just a reference to the fact that the *first* names of the "celebrities" are what appear in the grid? But you already told us that with APTLY NAMED CELEBRITIES, so this WEARING NAME TAGS thing is a ridiculous redundancy. This puzzle manages to ruin crosswords and mysteries, two things I love, simultaneously. I guess that after four (4!) good puzzles in a row, we were due for a regression toward the mean. A hard regression.

It would be cool if the SEA ROOM were just a room in your house that was filled with sea water and like a kelp forest. "What's behind this door?""NOOOoo don't open that!" But instead it's this dumb thing about room for ship maneuvering. Somehow SEA ROOM got in with SEAWEED already present (44D: Major source of oxygen in the earth's atmosphere). Weird. The grid itself ... I mean, there it is! Not much to like or dislike. The only thing I particularly like is the HYMN / FUNK juxtaposition, mostly because it sounds like a cool new genre of religious music. That's SUM FAR out HYMN FUNK, man""It's actually ASIAN HYMN FUNK, man""Whoa ... well turn it up, man." See, I'm inventing dialogue for this damn novel because it hasn't got any. With THE USA, I believe we have had definite article answers in roughly 93.2% of May puzzles (93D: Springsteen's birthplace, in song). The hardest I laughed was when I had CUN- and had not yet looked at the clue, and the most I was confused was by RACER, until finally I realized Sprint was an actual race, not the telecom (7A: Sprint competitor). Here's a good name for a mystery: "ENTER O for 'Omicide" (16D: Intestinal: Prefix). It's like "Dial M for Murder" but dumber. OK bye.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Andrea Carla Michaels and Victor Barocas

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (3:20) (the slight slowness is due primarily to the first themer, which I forgot existed, and to SPRITE ZERO, which I did not know existed until just now)

THEME: CHANGED ONE'S MIND (60A: Decided otherwise ... or a hint to the four sets of circled letters) — letters "MIND" appear in different orders in four themers:

Theme answers:

"MIDNIGHT IN PARIS" (17A: 2011 film co-starring Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams)
FIND MY IPHONE (26A: App introduced in 2010 to locate a missing Apple product)
ADMIN (37A: Business operations, informally)
LEONARD NIMOY (46A: Mr. Spock player)

Word of the Day: Acetic (which was somehow *not* the answer to 48D: Like vinegar (ACIDIC)) —

adjective
pertaining to, derived from, or producing vinegar or acetic acid. (dictionary.com) (my emph.)

• • •

Man they are shilling for Apple an awful lot these days. I mean, IMAC SIRI etc are always gonna pop up because of their favorable letter combos, but between yesterday's whole APPLE SWEATSHIRT (!?!?!) fiasco, and today's FIND MY IPHONE, the product placement has gone next-level. But to the puzzle ... the theme is pretty yesteryear, and is rather poorly executed. There's no method to the mind changes; these are just four possible combos (of 24, I think, though my math skills are poor). Why these four? Also, why move the "MIND" changes so herkily-jerkily across the grid. There's the superficial appearance of a neat progression (with "MIND" changes moving left-to-right as you descend the grid), but it's off / irregular. Then there's ADMIN, which is such a horrid disappointment as theme answers go. A five-letter nothing. Then there's the revealer with the always irksome ONE'S in it. Also, that phrase is weirdly in the past tense just so that the answer will come out to a clean fifteen. The whole thing feels hastily conceived and not entirely thought through. Certainly not carefully crafted. The fill, yeesh. I knew things were gonna be rough at ILEDE. Then there's that horrid suffix (-ICAL) and lots and lots of abbrs. and the awkwardness of MISMARK and on and on ANON. Antiquated and clunky. Theme needs some other level to feel special enough. Maybe break the "MIND" changes neatly across two words in two-word answers (the stray non-MIND-involved words in the themers (iPhone, "in Paris") are kind of annoying and sloppy-looking). I dunno. The theme just needs Something. Some level of elegance to elevate it from where it is now.

I think I saw "MIDNIGHT IN PARIS," but the clue did nothing for me so I needed "MIDNIGHT IN P-" to actually get it. Found clue on (again, awful) suffix -ICAL to be toughish, actually. Had to get most of SPRITE ZERO from crosses too, as its existence is news to me (11D: Sugar-free lemon-lime soda). The part that slowed me down the most by far, however, was having ACETIC at 48D: Like vinegar (ACIDIC). ACETIC isn't even a word I like knowing. It's just one of those words I acquired from doing crosswords. It is frequently clued as [Vinegary] or [Like vinegar]. Whereas this is only the second time ever (in the Shortz era) that ACIDIC has had a vinegar-related clue. It's not that the clue is wrong. I'm just trying to explain how easy it is for a constant solver to lose a chunk of time on that particular answer—not a particularly enjoyable kind of added difficulty, but added difficulty (for me) nonetheless.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Hi, everyone! It's Clare, back again for this last Tuesday in May. I hope you're all doing well! I've been mostly just trying to relax these last few weeks since my law school finals ended. Quarantine for me has basically been: 12 million card games, 17 loaves of bread, nine hikes (including a fun 14.5-miler with some rock climbing involved!), and three animals driving me up the wall. I was looking forward to some mental stimulation from this puzzle, but...

Constructor: Neville Fogarty

Relative difficulty:Medium

THEME: BODIES OF WATER (35A: What the ends of 17-, 21-, 55- and 60-Across end in)— the end word of each of the four theme answers is a body of water.

Theme answers:

COLIN FIRTH (17A: Best actor winner for "The King's Speech")
ARTHUR LAKE (21A: Actor who played Dagwood Bumstead in film, radio and TV)
BILLY OCEAN (55A: Singer with the 1984 #1 hit "Caribbean Queen")
MICHAEL BAY (60A: Pearl Harbor director, 2001)

Word of the Day: ARTHUR LAKE —

Arthur Lake (born Arthur Silverlake Jr.) was an American actor known best for bringing Dagwood Bumstead, the bumbling husband of Blondie, to life in film, radio and television. He portrayed the Blondie comic strip character in twenty-eightBlondie films produced by Columbia Pictures from 1938 to 1950. He was also the voice of Dagwood on the radio series, which ran from 1938 to 1950, earning a star for him on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. (Wiki)

• • •

I can think of almost nothing to say about this puzzle — the theme was run-of-the-mill, the fill was mostly boring, and there were a lot of obscure names. That's all I need to say, right? Cool.

OK, I guess I can say a bit more. This puzzle felt like it came from someone with quarantine-brain, even though it's probably been in the backlog for a while — it just had no real pizzazz to it. I think my feelings about the puzzle as a whole are best summarized by the way I felt when I saw the clue for 61D: Letter after kay. Seriously? That simple? Give me something more interesting, please, I beg of you!

Anyway... the puzzle as a whole felt quite boring and also fairly hard, mostly because of the names used in the theme. While I knew COLIN FIRTH and MICHAEL BAY, the two other themers just don't feel particularly relevant in today's world. The first thing that slowed me down with the theme was that I didn't know a "firth" was a body of water. Then, I didn't know who ARTHUR LAKE was (he went off the air on radio in 1950...), so I had to piece his name together from the downs; and, I didn't know BILLY OCEAN. So... that was pretty hard. I also feel like we've seen this kind of theme a million times before — and will see it a million times again: A group of celebrities with names that can be grouped into a vague category.

I finished this puzzle and looked back through to find something — anything — that I found remotely interesting. I've concluded that some of the longer downs in the puzzle (BRASILIA; OUTCLASS; NECKWEAR) were just fine. And, I think the best thing about the whole puzzle was 47D: Doll that ran for president for the first time in 1992 as BARBIE. That's at least a fun tidbit. Other than that, the fill was just sort of there and taking up space.

Bullets:

KRIS Jenner (20A) in a crossword puzzle? No, thank you!
I had no idea that an average HAT SIZE was 7 1/4 (42A) — I'm not sure I ever needed to know this but I suppose it's useful information. Bruce Bochy (former manager of my San Francisco Giants) has a hat size of 8 1/8. Dude has a noggin.
Here's BALOO singing "The Bare Necessities" to liven things up a bit:

And, because COLIN FIRTH is on the brain, here's an amazing scene of him in the "Pride and Prejudice" miniseries:

(And, if you like that scene, I'd highly recommend the life-changing 2005 movie version of "Pride and Prejudice," as well)

With that, I'm signing off. Hope you all stay safe and happy (and six feet apart!)

Signed, Clare Carroll — Barbie 2020

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Chris A. McGlothlin

Relative difficulty: Medium (4:00)

THEME: FORGONE (40A: Relinquished ... or a hint to 17-, 23-, 51- and 62-Across) — phrases that normally have "for" in them ... don't. "For"-less phrases are clued wackily ("?"-style):

Theme answers:

FISH COMPLIMENTS (17A: "Your fins are nice" and "You're a graceful swimmer"?)
THROWN A LOOP (23A: Done some lassoing?)
CAN'T SAY SURE (51A: Is unable to pronounce the name of a deodorant brand?)
OH CRYING OUT LOUD (62A: Actress Sandra emoting?)

Word of the Day: Sammy CAHN (18D: Lyricist Sammy) —

Sammy Cahn (June 18, 1913 – January 15, 1993) was an American lyricist, songwriter and musician. He is best known for his romantic lyrics to films and Broadway songs, as well as stand-alone songs premiered by recording companies in the Greater Los Angeles Area. He and his collaborators had a series of hit recordings with Frank Sinatra during the singer's tenure at Capitol Records, but also enjoyed hits with Dean Martin, Doris Day and many others. He played the piano and violin. He won an Oscar four times for his songs, including the popular song "Three Coins in the Fountain".
Among his most enduring songs is "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!", cowritten with Jule Styne in 1945. (wikipedia)

• • •

I just wanted to write "AWK" all over this thing when I was done with it. There is no joy to be had in this particular bit of word ... I hesitate to call it "play.""Muckery" is maybe better. Look, you take "FOR" out, fine. But before you go ahead with this idea, you need to ask yourself some questions. First, are the results going to yield the requisite fun, joy, pleasure, or are the results going to be largely clunky phrases that are hard to clue in any kind of sane way? That is, is the feeling of the solver going to be "ooh" or "huh?" or "yuck"? Second, is your revealer good? If it's just a boring word like FORGONE, can you do anything interesting with the clue? No? And no? Then no. I didn't even know FORGONE meant "Relinquished," since literally the only time I or you or anyone uses that word is in front of "conclusion," where it means (I think) something like "already arrived at"—"relinquished" doesn't really swap out in that phrase. I'm not sure I even kn— ... oh, damn. Wait. No wonder I want to spell it FOREGONE—that's the word I'm thinking of. Ugh, wow, your revealer is actually the past participle (!?) of the verb "forgo"!?!?!?!? OK, I'm adding yet another AWK to the margins of this puzzle (and docking myself a few points for not realizing more quickly that I had the wrong FOR(E)GONE in mind). I'm looking at these themers and ... yeah, you can do something with FISH COMPLIMENTS, but the others are pretty strained. I didn't even register that something was missing from THROWN A LOOP. I thought it was some weird variation on THROWN A CURVE. Also, what is it with this puzzle and past participles, yeesh. Between the unfun theme an the ye olde fill, this one didn't do much (for) me.

This puzzle played superweird, in that it was very easy for me *except* for the theme. I flew through most of the grid, but when I got toward the end (in that mess of a SW corner), I realized I was 80-90% done but also still had two themers unfinished. And I only got FORGONE because of crosses, the clue having made no sense to me. The front ends of the last two themers were not at all clear to me, and then the fill around that area, yikes. Semi-forgot Colin JOST's name (56D: Che's "Weekend Update" co-host on "S.N.L."), was unsure as always about COHAN's name, had no idea re: BONER (what year is it?) (44D: Slip-up). And not knowing that the "Actress Sandra" was Sandra Oh, I got super stuck in there. Well, not empirically super stuck, just super stuck relative to the rest of the grid. Did I like any fill. Well, there's nothing longer than 6 letters, so the puzzle's making it kinda hard. I do like the emergence of SWOLE as a regular 5-letter answer (55D: Bulging with muscles, in modern lingo). Otherwise, no. The fill isn't even trying to be lovable. It's just there.

NTESTS :(
NANU :(
ANNUS :(

There are definitely different branches and styles of yoga, but somehow YOGAS isn't sitting that well with me (54D: Hatha and Bikram, for two). COHAN *and* CAHN? In the same puzzle? You are dating yourself *and* not trying hard enough to diversify your fill. There was a time (let's call it, "the 20th century") when Broadway lyricists and composers were like half the fill of any given puzzle and you just had to learn the names or crash and burn. Then, time passed. Things got better. People from different professions were deemed worthy of inclusion in the grid. These days, you get one of those old Broadway guys per grid, tops. That's the rule. It's unwritten, or I made it up, but it's real. Oh, also, you can have OLIO or you can have OLEO, but you cannot have both OLIO and OLEO, and you *definitely* can't have them crossing (!?). And also oh (oh!), you cannot have "oh" in your grid twice. OH, STOP. Seriously, stop with the OHs. I don't care if one of those is a name. Sorry. Rules are rules. Please do better in the future.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. fun fact, if you change MIATA to TIARA, you don't have to deal with LAME, which is a downer of a word, however you clue it.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Tracy Bennett

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (4:40)

THEME: wacky phrases made up of two TV show titles —

Theme answers:

GET SMART FRIENDS (19A: What to do if you want to win bar trivia?)
DOCTOR WHO CHEERS (37A: Medical professional with a passion for pep rallies?)
THE SOPRANOS LOST (52A: Predictable result of a choir's Barry White singing contest?)

Word of the Day: Chu HSI (46A: Confucian scholar Chu ___) —

Zhu Xi ([ʈʂú ɕí]; Chinese: 朱熹; October 18, 1130 – April 23, 1200), also known by his courtesy name Yuanhui (or Zhonghui), and self-titled Hui'an, was a Chinese calligrapher, historian, philosopher, politician, and writer of the Song dynasty. He was a Confucian scholar who founded what later became known as the "learning of principle" or "rationalist" school (lixue 理學) and was the most influential Neo-Confucian in China. His contributions to Chinese philosophy including his editing of and commentaries to the Four Books, which later formed the curriculum of the civil service exam in Imperial China from 1313 to 1905; and his emphasis on the process of the "investigation of things" (gewu 格物) and meditation as a method for self cultivation.
Zhu has been described [as] the second most influential thinker in Chinese history, after Confucius himself. He was a scholar with a wide learning in the classics, commentaries, histories and other writings of his predecessors. In his lifetime he was able to serve multiple times as an government official, although he avoided public office for most of his adult life.^[1] He also wrote, compiled and edited almost a hundred books and corresponded with dozens of other scholars. He acted as a teacher to groups of students, many who chose to study under him for years. He built upon the teachings of the Cheng brothers and others; and further developed their metaphysical theories in regards to principle (li 理) and vital force (qi 氣). His followers recorded thousands of his conversations in writing.

• • •

This felt like a Wednesday theme living in a Friday grid. I guess that averages out to a Thursday, but still this lacked the usual Thursday sass / trickery. It's just ... two TV shows pushed together and imagined as wacky phrases. Seems like something you could do and do and do and do, i.e. the themer set is pretty arbitrary. They're all 15s, so that's ... something. But one's an imperative sentence, one's a noun phrase, and one's a declarative sentence. The types (genres) of shows involved are all over the map. It all just didn't feel coherent enough. And the low word-count grid is odd. Feels like a weird way to build in some added difficulty, since the theme doesn't really offer any. But you can get difficulty just from cluing so ... not sure why the word count is way down at themeless levels (72). It doesn't allow for much exceptional fill—if anything, the grid feels strained in parts; low word counts are good for themelesses because themelesses don't have ... themes ... putting pressure on the grid. I liked BAD KARMA and the clue on MOTH (which really tricked me) (33D: Bulb circler) and not a lot else. Didn't strongly dislike much either. Just think it missed the Thursday sweet spot.

[famously deep-voiced, thus ... sopranos are gonna struggle, I guess]

Grid was more crosswordesey than I'd like (NESS ENNE ESOS EDEMA EBRO AMES ENTS RAH DAW OVO HSI NALA ADOS). Had trouble with HSI HALIDE and OSMAN, and because HSI and HALIDE were in the same corner (SW), and that corner also had the ridiculously clued ORTHODOX in it (38D: Keenly observant), that was definitely the roughest part of the grid for me. I get that "Keenly" is supposed to mean "very" here, but you'd never use "keenly observant" to describe someone's religiosity. The only reason "keenly" is there is to make you think a different type of "observant" is intended. I have no problem with that kind of head fake if the clue you offer is in fact plausible. "Keenly" is just a clunk of an adverb to use in this context. The clue feels like cheap trickery, as opposed to the good trickery of, SAY, the clue on MOTH (33D: Bulb circler). There's ambiguity as to what type of bulb is meant, as to what "circling" might mean in this context, etc. I went from "what the hell...?" to "Oh! Oh, that's good." And that is the trajectory you want on a tough / tricky clue. ASNEAT is truly gruesome fill—no AS[adjective] is ever going to be good. Ever. Ever. I've seen lots of them (ASRED, ASBAD, etc.) and ASNEAT is up there with the worst. Just not a stand-alone phrase. FREE AT LAST, on the other hand, stands alone reasonably well, despite being just a fragment—MLK repeats that phrase to great dramatic effect, so it has suitable heft.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Sam Ezersky

Relative difficulty: Not sure ... mostly easy ... I don't really know what a just-rolled-out-of-bed 6:43 time means on a Friday any more. Easy but with a chunk in and around CANNERY that was hard ...

THEME: none

Word of the Day: TYREKE Evans (57A: Evans who was the 2009-10 N.B.A. Rookie of the Year) —

Tyreke Jamir Evans (born September 19, 1989) is an American professional basketball player. After playing college basketball for the Memphis Tigers, he was selected with the fourth overall pick in the 2009 NBA draft by the Sacramento Kings.^[1] Evans went on to win the 2010 NBA Rookie of the Year Award. He was traded to the New Orleans Pelicans in 2013 before being traded back to the Kings in 2017. After successive stints with the Memphis Grizzlies and Indiana Pacers, Evans, who would have become a free agent at the end of the 2019 season, was dismissed and disqualified from the NBA in May for violating the terms of the league's anti-drug program. (wikipedia)

• • •

This was perfectly fine, though the only part that really sparkled was NIGHTY-NIGHT (4D: "Sweet dreams!"). Most of this was solid, but a little flat. Green-paintish* stuff like RUNS A LAP and ATE LUNCH didn't help. AT THE HEART felt kinda longish for an incomplete phrase. AT HEEL does not feel like a current phrase. Can't imagine using it. TO HEEL I can hear. You can bring a dog TO HEEL. Something might be at *one's* heels. Dunno. The word THEODICY looks and sounds like something I've seen, but I'd be lying if I said I actually knew it (18A: Explanation for the existence of evil in God's presence). ON A kick? Never heard this phrase without some descriptive word following ON A. RCCOLA ... exists still? (Also: 7Up exists still?) (13D: Sister brand of 7Up). Multiple ... THYMES? This just felt a teensy bit stale—the feeling was actually made worse by the *attempts* at contemporary colloquial flash that actually felt like ... well, they would've been much flashier in the '00s (EPIC FAIL, "WHAT THE ...," CYBERanything). Ooh, I enjoyed seeing BATGIRL in a non-gendered clue, that was cool (7D: Enemy of the Joker).

Never a fan of cluing a perfectly good English word (PANE) as if it were foreign (30D: Bread, in Bologna). TYREKE Evans is superobscure if you are not an NBA fan. I follow the major sports loosely, and his name definitely rings a bell, but after that ROTY award (note: I would, in fact, accept ROTY in a puzzle), he didn't do anything exceptional. I mean, he was a pro, so he was obviously very good, but he never made an All-Star team or won a championship or did anything that would make him particularly crossworthy. In fact, I'm looking at a list of NBA Rookies of the Year and TYREKE Evans is one of the only names I *don't* really know from the past 40 years. I'm a little hazy on Michael Carter-Williams (2013-14) and Mike Miller (2000-01), but beyond that you gotta go back to '81-82 to find a name I can't place (that name: Buck Williams ... I just forgot him: he was active during the time I was most pro sports-crazy). My point here is TYREKE looks cool but is more a personal indulgence than a great answer.

Made some costly mistakes today, most notably BOLT for VOLT (23D: Lightning unit). Nice trick, I guess. Feels cheap, since obviously lightning comes in BOLTs, and no one says "ooh, did you see those howevermany VOLTs of lightning," but sure, technically, that clue works for that answer. Lost most time on one of my most hated clue types—the "Name that becomes this thing if you do these things to it"-type clue. Like, find a MYRA to use in your clue or **** ***! Had the "M" and then the "R" and still wasn't sure what was going on. And that answer was adjacent to CANNERY, which took me several seconds to get Even After I Had -ANNERY in place (37D: Corn or bean plant, perhaps). See, it's the factory meaning of "plant," not the plant meaning of "plant." Cute. I also wrote in READ instead of SCAN (got the stupid "A" first and ... d'oh!) (48A: Pore over). I think of "scanning" as reading quickly and "poring over" as reading thoroughly, but whatever, this puzzle has its own ideas. Oh, and off the READ error I wrote in ROOF at 48D: Flat part of a flat. That is the wrong answer I'm most proud of (real answer: SOLE).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. I associate the term PAIN PILL not with "relief" but with addiction (29A: What a relief!). :(

*green paint => an arbitrary phrase that, sure, one might say, but that doesn't really work as a stand-alone crossword answer

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Constructor: Brian Thomas

Relative difficulty: Easy (6:17, first thing in the a.m.)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Tower of HANOI (37A: Tower of ___ (classic math puzzle)) —

The Tower of Hanoi (also called the Tower of Brahma or Lucas' Tower and sometimes pluralized as Towers) is a mathematical game or puzzle. It consists of three rods and a number of disks of different sizes, which can slide onto any rod. The puzzle starts with the disks in a neat stack in ascending order of size on one rod, the smallest at the top, thus making a conical shape.
The objective of the puzzle is to move the entire stack to another rod, obeying the following simple rules:
Only one disk can be moved at a time.
Each move consists of taking the upper disk from one of the stacks and placing it on top of another stack or on an empty rod.
No larger disk may be placed on top of a smaller disk.
With 3 disks, the puzzle can be solved in 7 moves. The minimal number of moves required to solve a Tower of Hanoi puzzle is 2ⁿ − 1, where n is the number of disks.

• • •

I enjoyed this one reasonably well, though much of that enjoyment probably came from the merciful ease with which I flew through it. Early-morning Saturday solves can be brutal, and there's a feeling of both relief and exhilaration that comes with knocking them out quickly. That feeling, however, can really color your (my) opinions about a puzzle. That is, as I've said before, people tend to be warmly disposed to puzzles they crush and poorly disposed to those that you don't. I try to correct for this feeling, perhaps not always successfully. Am I pleased with the puzzle, or my own mastery? Does it matter? In my case, it probably matters, since I'm supposed to be talking about these things, at least in part, in terms of their technical specs and craftsmanship. This one seems quite solid, if somewhat workmanlike, somewhat over-conventional (in the short stuff, mostly). There's not a lot of zing, but there are also no glaring weaknesses, and there was no point where I genuinely winced or found anything more than a stray answer or too very unpalatable. It felt like it was catering to an older audience (Sonic the Hedgehog reference aside), but that's not bad. It didn't feel exclusionary. Just very much over-the-plate for X'ers boomers and up. SPRING CHICKEN itself is a phrase that would probably only be used by someone who was NoSPRING CHICKEN (I think I am familiar with this phrase exclusively in the negative) (31A: No oldster). CHOO-CHOO-TRAIN is cute (36A: Something a toddler might chug?). Do toddlers still "chug" these though? Does Thomas still exist? Train sets feel very middle of last century. I love this answer, I'm just explaining why the vibe of the puzzle felt (in a nice way) older. Not a lot of slang or fresh fill, but entertaining nonetheless, and well put together.

I don't have much to say about this one, though. It's weird how fast I solved it, considering its frame of reference often isn't mine. All the "game" stuff that (I guess) puzzle solvers are supposed to know / appreciate, I didn't. Tower of HANOI was totally new to me—guessed it off the -OI. I had SPIT as SCAT (or maybe SKAT) at first—that feels like the name of a card game, but I could very easily be wrong there (as I was, literally, wrong, obviously, since the answer is SPIT) (42A: Two-player card game). I can't stand Scrabble so though I know the basic rules and format, I don't think that much about it, and I had THIRTEEN before NINETEEN there (13D: Number that can be spelled with only one-point Scrabble tiles). Can't imagine wanting to clue NINETEEN that way, just as I can't imagine wanting to clue TERMS via algebra. But your cluing brain goes where it goes, I guess. No one section of this grid gave me any particular trouble. I was fittingly slow getting SLOWS (1D: Prepares to enter a work zone, perhaps), but SEAT HENIE ATRIA got me started up there, and then ON RETAINER blew it open (reading a lot of Perry Mason lately, and a lot of the book I'm currently reading (The Case of the Curious Bride) involves Perry doing a lot of work for a client he hasn't even officially taken on—one who in fact stormed out of his office—because he finds out after that initial meeting that the woman has already put him ON RETAINER by leaving $$$ with Della before the meeting ever started. So he's like "well, she left the money, so ... guess I better work even though she has given me nothing specific to do." Seems like you'd just return the retainer, but Perry's gonna Perry, whaddyagonnado? Anyway, after I got out of the NW, I had only occasional trouble—nothing terribly noteworthy.

[so. excited.]

Minor Trouble:

26A: Calm (SEDATE) — I had SERENE. Costly.
8D: "Roots" surname (KINTE)— easy, but I misspelled it KENTE.
21D: Autumnal salad ingredients (PEPITAS) — hardest answer for me to get, despite the fact that I like to eat them. These are pumpkin seeds.
27D: Lancaster and Cornwall, for two (DUCHIES)— I take it back; this was the hardest for me to get. And right alongside PEPITAS, too. Good thing crosses were all so gettable.

43D: Stomach soother, for short (PEPTO) — was looking for a generic term, like BROMO (?) here. But it's short for the brand PEPTO-Bismol.
44D: Summertime coolers (ICEES) — since I had SCAT for SPIT and I had ECO in place, this answer looked like it started AC ... and I ended up with ACEES thinking "that canNOT be an acceptable spelling of the abbr. for 'air conditioners'!" Thankfully, I was right.
36D: Low-cost version, informally (CHEAPIE) — This term feels ... dated? Seems like maybe you'd use it adjectivally, but then ... why not just use 'cheap.''Cheapo?' The primary way I know CHEAPIE is as the thing that gangster Mendy Menendez calls Philip Marlowe in The Long Goodbye: this, and "Tarzan on a big red scooter":

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Lewis Rothlein and Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (time in the 12s, but I stopped a bunch for screen shots, so I'd say at least a minute less than that) (oh and I've had a margarita, so probably need a difficulty adjustment there, too)

THEME: "What Goes Up Must Come Down" — themers have internal palindromes and those are represented in the grid by letters that literally go up (i.e. you read them up) and then down (i.e. you read the same letters back down) before continuing on with the non-palindromic rest of the answer:

Theme answers:

MOBILE LIBRARIES (32A: Providers of books to remote locations)
JUVENILE DELINQUENCY (34A: Unlawful activity by a minor)
MEDICINAL PLANTS (66A: Some natural remedies)
COMMERCE SECRETARY (69A: Cabinet position once held by Herbert Hoover)
INOPPORTUNE MOMENT (104A: Untimely time)
ELABORATE DETAIL (107A: Great depth)

Word of the Day: LENA (43D: Long river of Siberia) —

The Lena (Russian: Ле́на, IPA: [ˈlʲɛnə]; Evenki: Елюенэ, Eljune; Yakut: Өлүөнэ, Ölüöne; Buryat: Зүлхэ, Zülkhe; Mongolian: Зүлгэ, Zülge) is the easternmost of the three great Siberian rivers that flow into the Arctic Ocean (the other two being the Ob' and the Yenisey). Permafrost underlies most of the catchment, 77% of which is continuous. The Lena is the eleventh-longest river in the world. [...] The Lena massacre was the name given to the 1912 shooting-down of striking goldminers and local citizens who protested at the working conditions in the mine near Bodaybo in northern Irkutsk. The incident was reported in the Duma (parliament) by Kerensky and is credited with stimulating revolutionary feeling in Russia.
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov may have taken his alias, Lenin, from the river Lena, when he was exiled to the Central Siberian Plateau. (wikipedia)

• • •

Hello! Or should I say, HELLO! (19A: Word whose rise in popularity coincided with the spread of the telephone). I have been realizing, slowly, as this pandemic wears on, that what I want most from crosswords isn't technical proficiency or theme pyrotechnics. It's fun. Joy. Yes, there's always some inherent joy in filling in boxes, getting the right answers, etc. But I will take a simple silly gimmick if it's genuinely ridiculous and warm-hearted and entertaining. Are you having fun or just going through the motions? Does the puzzle exist in order to fill space or does it seem designed to amuse? Has it been slapped together with all the usual old fill / clues, or has it been crafted with care and wit. Does it have at least a little currency? A little now-ness? A smile to offer? A wink? A slight "'sup?" of a head nod? I'm trying to figure out why this puzzle, which seems competent enough, just left me cold. I think that, once I saw what the themers were going to do, I thought, "well ... I guess they're just gonna do that ... some more." And they did. And then the puzzle was over. There was nothing more to it than the up and the down gimmick. And look, it's structurally at least interesting, and probably technically at least a little hard to pull off while also maintaining passable fill. But the overall effect was about as fun as tossing and catching a ball lightly in one hand, over and over. The tosses aren't remarkable in themselves. They don't connect to one another, or have anything in common. There's no revealer, no "here's why we did this!" Just the metronomic up and down of the bouncing ball. Just 'cause. And the fill was, with a few exceptions, industry standard. Shrug. I expect much more than a shrug. These days, I *need* much more than a shrug.

Here was my opening gambit:

ENIAC sets off mild alarms. Stalesness alarms. But I press on.

At this point, still not feeling great about things, but then I haven't gotten any answer over 5 letters, so let's keep going and see what happens? This is just after I "get" the theme:

Thought JUVENILE went through, then couldn't get the "I" to work, eventually got EQUIP and bingo, there was the theme. I thought maybe the up/down part would spell something or have some meaning or ... something. But that never panned out. Just a whole lot more up/down.

The clue on CELIBATE is just wrong, or at least wildly inappropriate. A "virgin" is someone who has not had sex. A CELIBATE person has made a deliberate choice to abstain from sex, usually for religious reasons. This answer makes my bile rise (not really, I just wanted to say that because BILE is literally "rising" inside this answer). Let's see, what else? I wrote in EUGENE instead of HELENA, so that was fun (14D: State capital in Lewis and Clark county). You'd think I'd've remembered that the capital of Oregon is SALEM, but no. I also wrote in ELLS and LIGHT (!?) before ERAS (111D: Museum sections, perhaps) and ANGLE (122A: Selfie taker's concern). I liked IMPOUND LOT better than anything in this grid, I think. I also appreciated the genderless I.T. PEOPLE (51A: Bug experts, informally). I would've spelled MEANY with an -IE (71D: Villain). NOBLE LIE seems like a really dumb answer you'd never use if it hadn't been in some wordlist somewhere (109A: Myth propagated to promote social harmony, in Plato's "Republic"). GET A FLAT has big EAT A SANDWICH energy (84A: Pop a wheelie?). Mostly the fill is just flat. MATTE. Dull.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. I love you, Minneapolis

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Constructor: Erik Agard

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: Encouraging phrases— Theme answers are encouraging phrases.

Theme answers:

WE'RE NUMBER ONE (19A: Message on a giant foam finger)
SHE'S ALL THAT (35A: 1999 rom-com with Freddie Prinze Jr. and Rachael Leigh Cook)
YOU'RE THE TOP (43A: "Anything Goes" song)
THEY'RE GRRREAT (57A: Kellogg's Frosted Flakes slogan)

Word of the Day: RUMBA (17A: Cuban dance) —

Rumba is a secular genre of Cuban music involving dance, percussion, and song. It originated in the northern regions of Cuba, mainly in urban Havana and Matanzas, during the late 19th century. It is based on African music and dance traditions, namely Abakuá and yuka, as well as the Spanish-based coros de clave. According to Argeliers León, rumba is one of the major "genre complexes" of Cuban music,^[1] and the term rumba complex is now commonly used by musicologists.^[2]^[3] This complex encompasses the three traditional forms of rumba (yambú, guaguancó and columbia), as well as their contemporary derivatives and other minor styles.

(Wikipedia)

• • •

This was a fun one! Too fun. I told Rex it was kind of hard to talk about because I don't really have any issues with it. Pretty average quality, solved it pretty quick. Had HALT for WHOA. The "hand on the shoulder" pun about AAA was cute. I dunno. Sorry to be an ASS, I'm just tired and this puzzle didn't really scratch my ITCH for some reason. Also I want LAVA cake now. Does anyone know a good recipe?

Theme is pretty weak. How is "they're grrr-eat" an encouraging phrase when it's just a slogan? I guess that's Monday themes for you. I know we could all use a little encouragement these days but these just didn't really do a lot.

Bullets:

THEY'RE GRRR-EAT (57A: Kellogg's Frosted Flakes slogan) — Despite what I just said (and I stand by it not being an "encouraging phrase"), my family is obsessed with Frosted Flakes. Like, obsessed. My mom doesn't even eat cereal with milk but we still always keep a box in the pantry and we even have a box framed and hanging up on the wall. I don't get it but it's fun.
Why
FRUIT HAT (14D: Signature accessory of Carmen Miranda) — I thought for sure the Carmen Miranda headdress had a real name, but Wikipedia proved me wrong by also calling it a "fruit hat." Shows what I know, I guess?
WHOA (63D: Equestrian's "Stop!") — I'm writing a novel set in a horse barn! And I'm allowed to tell you this because I've written 30,000 words of it already so it's technically a novella, so I'm not just whistling Dixie here. Writing a novel is hard. Did you know that after you introduce characters, you have to, like...keep them consistent and also take them on interesting arcs that make sense? Phew. It's a struggle.
ABBA (5A: "Dancing Queen" group) — What's your favorite Abba song? Here's my pick.

Signed, Annabel Thompson

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Constructor: John Guzzetta

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (3:30, though I really fat-fingered this one, so it might've been easier ...)

THEME: PART COMPANY (56A: Go their separate ways ... or a description of 17-, 24-, 35- or 47-Across?) — each answer is part company (in the sense that a labradoodle is part poodle); the part that is the company appears in circled squares in the grid:

Theme answers:

BISCAYNE BAY (17A: View off the coast of Miami)
VOCAL COACH (24A: One who helps you hit just the right note)
SAINT ELMO (35A: Patron of sailors)
BUCK ROGERS (47A: Science fiction hero of the 25th century)

Word of the Day: BUCK ROGERS (47A) —

Buck Rogers is a fictional space opera character created by Philip Francis Nowlan in the novella Armageddon 2419 A.D., subsequently appearing in multiple media. In Armageddon 2419 A.D., published in the August 1928 issue of the pulp magazine Amazing Stories, the character's given name was "Anthony". A sequel, The Airlords of Han, was published in the March 1929 issue. [...] The adventures of Buck Rogers in comic strips, movies, radio and television became an important part of American popular culture. It was on January 22, 1930, that Buck Rogers first ventured into space aboard a rocket ship in his fifth newspaper comic story Tiger Men From Mars. This popular phenomenon paralleled the development of space technology in the 20th century and introduced Americans to outer space as a familiar environment for swashbuckling adventure.
Buck Rogers has been credited with bringing into popular media the concept of space exploration, following in the footsteps of literary pioneers such as Jules Verne, H. G. Wells and Edgar Rice Burroughs. (wikipedia)

• • •

Crossword puzzles feel a little trivial right now, what with the country burning down and the full force of the military unleashed on peaceful American citizens, all because some of y'all thought electing a white supremacist / fascist / actually illiterate boob would be just fine, but diversions are diversions because they divert, so let's be diverted for a little bit, shall we? This puzzle wasn't good. I do not actually understand the revealer. Or, rather, I think I do understand it, now, but I did not, at first. I could not get my head around what the PART part of PART COMPANY thought it was doing. I thought maybe it was "part" like "part the Red Sea," because the "company" names in the answers are broken (i.e. parted) by the space between the two words in each answer. That is, the "company" names break across two words. Break into parts. But now I think it just means that the "company" name is "part" of the answer, so the answer is PART COMPANY in the sense that a skort is part skirt. *Partially*. Anyway, whatever, it's bad. "Company" is sooooooooo broad a concept that it's practically meaningless. This set of "companies" has nothing in common. And there's just four. Four Random "companies." Also, are KROGER supermarkets a nationwide thing? Never saw one in CA. They were all over MI. But haven't seen one in NY. Anyway, the revealer is a real let-down, the concept is pretty dull, and the fill overall feels stodgy. This feels like something from last century. Not cringey, just blah. VADIS OCHOA ISAAK OTO SRO EMIR blah blah blah. Cluing RAPS as a noun didn't really help. "Oh yeah, sure, I love RAPS. They're bitchin'," he said, convincingly.

A LAD wears knickers? I was thinking of knickers as a decidedly female undergarment (British), so I was slow there. I have absolutely no time to read your eternal clue for APT (10A: Like the anagramming of A DECIMAL POINT to make I'M A DOT IN PLACE), and man I'm glad I didn't actually read it, 'cause what an enormous anticlimax. Wrote in FLOG before FLAY (29D: Whip). Could not relate to the clue on"SADLY, NO" (43D: Response to "Did you win the lottery?") because only people who hate having money and math play the lottery, so that whole deal didn't compute for me. I think my favorite part of the solve was getting to this clue ...

... and looking down and seeing these letters in place:

I double- and possibly triple-taked on that one.

Hey, if you want to do some puzzles by some of the best constructors in the country *and* support the struggle against systemic racist violence in this country, here are a couple options.

Erik Agard is raising money for 1StruggleKC, a bail reform group (to donate and for more info, go here). Send a screenshot of your donation to agarderik at gmail dot com and Erik will send you a bunch of unreleased crosswords. He doesn't really make bad puzzles, so I'd roll the dice with this one if I were you. Full info here.
Further, the great Paolo Pasco will send you a 17x17 puzzle (by him) *and* a 25x9 (!) puzzle (by Sid Sivakumar) if you send him a screenshot of your donation to *any* Black Lives Matter-related org (pascopuzzles at gmail dot com). And if it's over $50, he'll make you a midi (I think that's 11x11) with a clue/answer of your choice. That's crazy generous. Please overwhelm him now. Full info here.

Thank you, and stay safe.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Johanna Fenimore

Relative difficulty: Easy (under 4)

THEME: BIG BAD WOLF (57A: Fairy tale villain associated with the ends of 20-, 27- and 49-Across) — HUFF and PUFF and BLOW are the ends of the themers:

Theme answers:

LEAVES IN A HUFF (20A: Storms out)
CHEESE PUFF (27A: Airy snack item)
KURTIS BLOW (49A: Singer whose 1980 single "The Breaks" was the first gold record rap song)

Word of the Day: KURTIS BLOW (49A) —

Kurtis Walker (born August 9, 1959), professionally known by his stage name Kurtis Blow, is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, record/film producer, b-boy, DJ, public speaker and minister. He is the first commercially successful rapper and the first to sign with a major record label. "The Breaks", a single from his 1980 self-titled debut album, is the first certified gold record rap song for Hip Hop. Throughout his career he has released 15 albums and is currently an ordained minister.

• • •

I was solving this puzzle and had no real idea what the theme was and wasn't particularly in love with the fill, but then two things happened to brighten my mood considerably. First, I ran into the name of my new kitten, who is currently the center of my life, because ... well, I mean, come on:

4 weeks old when we found him in our bushes

7 weeks old now

So when someone asks me "What's it all about?" I can honestly answer: "ALFIE" (22D: Title role for Michael Caine and Jude Law). So that answer was a joy to get, and then right after that I ran into KURTIS BLOW and it's my sincere belief that no puzzle that contains KURTIS BLOW can be truly bad. Throw all the EWW and AONE and LETO ETTA PASHA ALEE you want in there, the power of KURTIS BLOW cancels them all out. These are the breaks.

After KURTIS BLOW, I was set. The theme ... well, I really really (really) wish that there had been some way to incorporate HOUSE DOWN into the theme somehow. Even if HOUSE had just been one of the Down answers in the grid somewhere, that would've made me smile. As it is, it doesn't really represent the Wolf threat trifecta: huff, puff, blow your house down (not huff, puff, blow). Still, the themers are good on their own, and the fill is, at worst, average, and so, by the transitive property of KURTIS BLOW and the mystical power of ALFIE, I declare this puzzle just fine.

["You're free to come and go / Or talk like KURTIS BLOW ..."]

I sailed through this, though looking back, I appear to have made a number of initial errors. Writing in AID for ACT was weirdly obstructive (23D: Be effective), I think because TORIC ran through that answer, and I was somehow not seeing the capital letters on "Life Savers" and so kept wanting some word like "heroic." I also had OPTIMAL (which is the adjective I'd use) rather than OPTIMUM (which is ... a noun to me). OPTIMUM is suboptimal imho, but it's valid, so fine. Speaking of suboptimal: NIKKI Haley, who almost single-handedly un-KURTIS BLOWs this puzzle with her horrid Trump handmaidenness. Please don't put (R) bootlickers in my puzzles!!! But then there's a big cup of coffee there with ARABICA and suddenly I'm happy again. So many moods! To sum up: my cat ALFIE is gerat, KURTIS BLOW is great, the fill has issues, NIKKI Haley has issues. Verdict: just fine.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. TWEENER is not a word and won't ever be so delete it from your wordlists Thank U!

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Barbara Lin

Relative difficulty: Easy (4:29, first thing in the morning)

THEME: Unhappy workers — corny verb-phrase puns related to different occupations:

Theme answers:

17A: The unhappy drill press operator FINDS WORK BORING
24A: The unhappy calendar maker NEEDS A WEEK OFF
40A: The unhappy elevator operator ASKS FOR A RAISE
52A: The unhappy orthopedic surgeon WANTS MORE BREAKS

Word of the Day: RENÉ Caovilla (12D: Shoe designer Caovilla) —

Edoardo Caovilla, the father of Rene Fernando, was a student of Luigi Voltan, who had been the first to make shoes in Riviera del Brenta's. Edoardo Caovilla favored high-end fashions marrying craftsmanship with couture. Edoardo’s wife would embroider shoes by hand in a small room with four other people. The room in which they worked has been preserved in the Caovilla factory.
In 1950, Rene Caovilla went to Paris and London to study design. He returned home and began working with his father. In the early 1960s he took over the family business from his father. He met his wife, Paola, whose family was also in the footwear business at a shoe fair. Paola became responsible for public relations and the Caovilla handbag line. His concentration was on the high-end of the market with opulent evening shoes. His work is known for elegant detailing and high quality.
Beginning in the 1970s, he worked with Valentino Garavani.. In the 1980s, he began to collaborate with Christian Dior and Chanel. Working alongside Karl Lagerfeld in 2000, Caovilla decided to create jeweled shoes. On 10 September 2007, Harrods hired a live Egyptian cobra to protect the shoe counter, guarding a pair of haute couture ruby, sapphire and diamond encrusted sandals launched by Rene Caovilla.
Among the numerous celebrities that have been seen wearing Rene Caovilla shoes are Jennifer Aniston, Tyra Banks, and Heidi Klum, Kristen Stewart, and Nikki Reed. (wikipedia)

• • •

This is a Wednesday puzzle. Is it Wednesday? Seriously, is it? Days of the week are infamously hard to tell apart during this whole pandemic business. (Checks calendar) Nope, it's Thursday alright, so I don't know what happened here. The theme type and the difficulty level both scream Wednesday, but OK, let's just roll with it. These are corny puns. If you like that sort of thing, you like it, and there you are. I like that there is kind of unity to the group on a couple of levels (all of them are "unhappy," all of the answers are 3rd-person present indicative verb phrases). That second themer feels a little off, compared to the others. Drill press operators bore, elevator operators raise (people), orthopedic surgeons help fix breaks (of bones). Calendar makers ... ??? They make calendars, which happen to contain weeks??? If you took a "week off" of a calendar, it would make no sense. This is not a paradigmatic activity of a calendar maker, although ... I wouldn't know exactly what a calendar maker does because ... what kind of job is that? I recognize the other jobs as jobs (although elevator operators today exist almost exclusively in movies from the 1930s). Calendar maker? Really? Both the job itself and the phrase associated with it feel ... well, weak (rimshot!).

There were lots of little sticky parts to this puzzle, all the stickiness due to cluing and none of stickiness very sticky. I had the hardest time with TREAD (5A: Tank part). I had -READ and wasn't sure. I kept picturing the turret. Is the TREAD the part on the ground? Is it just called a TREAD? If you said a [Car part] was TREAD, I would be a little mad at that, for sure, though technically you would be right in that a car needs tires and tires have treads. I am not a tank part specialist. I had INIMICAL (??) before INDECENT (4D: Not appropriate) and had some difficulty coming up with DEEPENS (20A: Increases in intensity). DABBLE AT before DABBLE IN slowed me somewhat (9D: Casually try). No idea about the shoe designer guy, but crosses took care of him pretty easily. Same with FTLEE (28D: One side of New York/New Jersey's G.W. Bridge), although at least I've heard of FTLEE and seen it in puzzles (which meant I could get it from FTL--). I don't think of RAW BAR as a "server," so that was weird (43D: Seafood server). [Graze] was a tough clue for SKIM (at least for me). And despite my daily non-sleeping household activity being roughly 75% KITTEN-related, I had zero idea what [Cute calendar subject] was getting at. That's a pretty tenuous connection, there. I object to all calendar-related content in this puzzle. The rest was mostly tolerable.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Home for Hogarth or Constable / SAT 5-16-20 / Unit of magnetic flux / Means of devastation on Game of Thrones / Fictional land in highest-grossing film of 2018 / Claw-proof crate / Aristocrat in British slang / Chain with loaf of bread in its logo

Chinese port city on Korea Bay / SUN 5-17-20 / Pan flute musician in iconic commercials of 1980s / End-of-level challenges in video games / Dyes that can be used as pH indicators / Rockyesque interjections / Group of 18th-century thinkers that included Voltaire Rousseau

Houston-based food giant / MON 5-18-20 / Three goals by same player / British heavy metal band named for torture device

Counterculture singer Phil / TUE 5-19-20 / View in order to mock or criticize perhaps

Pacific root vegetable / WED 5-20-20 / Canadian sketch comedy show of 1970s-80s / Tender kind of lettuce

Classic work famously translated by John Dryden / THU 5-21-20 / Lewis Taste of Country Cooking writer / Classic gin grenadine cocktail / Fix for shortsightedness

Classic source of damask / FRI 5-22-20 / Marina frequenter informally / Instrumental that might accompany blooper reel / Noted surname among 1973 Yale Law graduates / Cheaper option of tech device maybe

Peter preceder in phonetic alphabet / SAT 5-23-20 / Timor UN member since 2002 / Gitano Spanish language hit for Beyoncé and Alijandro Fernanández / Name derived from Greek for holy / First name in Springfield Elementary

Mystery of McGuffin Manor / SUN 5-24-20 / Sprint competitor / Tech debut of 1998 / Hungry game characters / Style for Edward Hopper George Bellows / Music to hitchhiker's ears / Big launch of 1957 / Leader whose name means literally commander

Title house owner in 2000 Martin Lawrence comedy / MON 5-25-20 / Sugar-free lemon-lime soda / Suffix with period class / Word after monkey handle / App introduced in 2010 to locate missing Apple product / Ancient land that lent its name to an order of architecture

adjective

Liable to snoop / TUES 5-26-20 / In scoring position, say / "Straight Outta Compton" group / Bamboozles

Title dance in 1999 #3 hit / WED 5-27-20 / Tree of the custard apple family / U.N. workers grp / Frasier's producer on Frasier / Big-bottomed fruit / Early 2000s sitcom set near Houston / Bikini blasts informally / Natty neckwear

Confucian scholar Chu / THU 5-28-20 / Yellow creature in series of hit animated films / Moor's foe in early eighth century / Flagship sch. with famed serpentine garden walls

Explanation for existence of evil in God's presence / FRI 5-29-20 / Evans who was 2009-10 Rookie of the Year / Thrombus more familiarly / Sister brand of 7Up / Sail-hoisting device / Corn or bean plant perhaps / Relative of histogram

Rotund archenemy of Sonic the Hedgehog / SAT 5-30-20 / Asian city on Yamuna River / Tower of classic math puzzle / Autumnal salad ingredients / Notable feature of opening clarinet solo in Rhapsody in Blue / Automotive debut of 1964

Classic brand of candy wafers / SUN 5-31-20 / Opposite of une adversaire / Myth propagated to promote social harmony in Plato's Republic / Magical teen of Archie Comics / 2017 hit movie about an Olympic skater / Songbird with dark iridescent plumage

Award-winning sports journalist who went from ESPN to The Atlantic / MON 6-1-2020 / Turned white / "Anything Goes" song / Company that launched Pong / Hanukkah coins

Secures as climber's rope / TUE 6-2-20 / Knickers wearer maybe / Cute pudginess in toddler / Science fiction her of 25th century / Al Capone chasers informally

Singer whose 1980 single The Breaks was first gold record rap song / WED 6-3-20 / Starting point for German count / Actress director Lupino

Shoe designer Caovilla / THU 6-4-20 / Title woman of 1965 Beach Boys hit / Beginner's trumpet sound / Low-effor internet joke / Early people of Great Lakes / Early PC software / Original occupation for Rachel on Friends