Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle

Constructor: Jake Halperin

Relative difficulty: Medium, I think (time was somewhere in the 7s, but I was going slowly, taking notes, so the clock doesn't tell me much)

THEME: a chore and more — themers are all ... kind of rhyming puns? ... which all end with some phrase meaning "and the rest" and start with a word that is a (near) homophone of some word in that final phrase. Thus:

Theme answers:

LIKES AND THE LIKE (15A: Reactions to social media posts?)
SETTERS ET CETERA (21A: Breeds of hunting dogs?)
ALI ET ALII (33A: Boxing champs of the 1960s-'70s?)
KNOTS AND WHAT NOT (47A: Things that scouts earn badges for?)
UDDERS AND OTHERS (54A: Cows' various glands?)

Word of the Day:"Hobbs & Shaw" (14A: Title partner of Hobbs in a hit 2019 film) —

Hobbs & Shaw (also known as Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw or Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw) is a 2019 American action film directed by David Leitch and written by Chris Morgan and Drew Pearce, from a story by Morgan. It is a spin-off of the The Fast Saga franchise set in between the events of 2017’s The Fate of the Furious and 2020’s F9. It is the ninth full-length film released overall. The film sees Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham reprise their roles from the main series as Luke Hobbs and Deckard Shaw respectively, and also stars Idris Elba, Vanessa Kirby, Eiza González, Cliff Curtis, and Helen Mirren. The plot follows the unlikely pairing of the titular characters as they team up with Shaw's sister (Kirby) to battle a cybernetically-enhanced terrorist (Elba) threatening the world with a deadly virus. (wikipedia)

• • •

This is obviously not good. I want to say it's a cute idea, but I'm not sure it's even that. I think the theme holds up for maybe two of the five themers (SETTERS ET CETERA, ALI ET ALII), but it really starts unraveling with the others, with other words and syllables getting in the way and making what little charm the theme might have had disappear. UDDERS is particularly bad, since it's a pun and not an attempt at an exact homonym like the others. With LIKES AND THE LIKE and especially KNOTS AND WHAT NOT you don't even feel the theme, really. That is, where ALI ET ALII announces its wordplay pretty forcefully, with those other two it's like "what ... is even happening here? What are the THE and the WHAT doing there? and ... oh, was I supposed to notice that KNOTS and NOT rhyme? Nope. Those words are too ordinary and far apart." These are five phrases that are all 15 letters long; that seems to have been a more important consideration than theme consistency or solving pleasure or anything else. Clunk clunk clunk. The grid is choppy as hell and full of staleage (TANGELO, ADEN, OATER, etc.). What is "staleage"? It's a word I made up. It means "stale stuff." Which brings me to OWNAGE (46A: Domination, in slang), which ... really should've been PWNAGE, imhop (in my humble opinion pancakes).

PROUDER (38D) / UGH (8D)

VERANDAED is so bad it's SUABLE, which is also not a word. You dig? 'Cause I DIG (13A: "Point taken,"'60s-style). Did you know you build verandas with TBEAMs? Well, you probably don't, I just wanted to bring up TBEAM, yet another answer from outer space. Honestly, this puzzle lost me from the second it expected me to know anything about "a series of James Patterson novels" (1A: Employer of Detective Lindsay Boxer in a series of James Patterson novels). There was nothing very remarkable about how I solved this. I just puttered around the grid until it was done. If I got stuck, I just moved and came back and then I was unstuck. Not even an epic battle to recount. Just putt putt putt yep all the squares are filled in. I had a single moment of 'wow' and that was when my eyes WIDENed and I thought "wow ... really? VERANDAED?" Great, not my brain is singing this answer to the tune of Boston's "Amanda." And now, if I'm doing my job right, your brain is doing the same. Good day.

["You put a porch upon your house / Then sit and watch the cows / VERANDAED! It's what I did to my estate / And I just think it's great / VERANDAED!"]

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Mary Lou Guizzo and Erik Agard

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (trivia just not in my wheelhouse) (high 6s)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Sue (?) (15A: Sue at Chicago's Field Museum, e.g. => T-REX) —

Sue is the nickname given to FMNH PR 2081, which is one of the largest, most extensive, and best preserved Tyrannosaurus rex specimens ever found, at over 90% recovered by bulk. It was discovered on 12 August 1990, by Sue Hendrickson, an explorer and fossil collector, and was named after her. After ownership disputes were settled, the fossil was auctioned in October 1997, for US $8.3 million, the highest amount ever paid for a dinosaur fossil, and is now a permanent feature at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, Illinois. (wikipedia)

• • •

Well, first off, that is not how you spell William S. Burroughs (17A: Seminal William S. Burrows novel, 1959 => "NAKED LUNCH"). It's not as bad as claiming that Harold Ramis directed "Ghostbusters" (which the NYTXW also did recently), but it's pretty bad. I will admit that I missed the error, as I was solving quickly. But then it's not my *job* to catch the error. So. Yeah. Quality control. Look into it. OK. Moving on.

This seems like a reasonably well put-together puzzle, but it just wasn't for me. The proper name trivia was (mostly) out of my wheelhouse and somewhat dully clued, and I just never got that exhilarating "ooh, cool" feeling I get with the best Fridays. I set the bar pretty high for Friday, as it is a hard day to botch. I think of Friday as breezy / fun themeless day (as opposed to grinding maybe-fun Saturday). I just couldn't find the handle on this one. Got it done in reasonable time, but only perked up at "NAKED LUNCH" and "I BLAME MYSELF." Clues often felt like they were straining for novelty / cleverness, which just left them awkward and opaque. E.g. [Ring bearers] = TOES. I mean, yeah, sure, OK, people put rings there, and I see that you're playing on the concept of "ring bearer" at, like, a wedding ceremony, but *getting* that left me feeling more "really? ... I guess ..." than "ooh, good one!" I want "ooh, good one!" as often as possible. So often the problem with NYTXW is the cluing voice (which is ultimately the editor's, though the constructors' original clues do set the tone). Clues were drab or else weirdly involved, but to no great effect. I mean, a paragraph for a CALVIN clue that wasn't even that funny? (49A: Comics title character who says "Getting an inch of snow is like winning 10 cents in the lottery"). I don't see the point. Mostly, though, this was just a bad fit. I don't care at all about reality TV, for instance (though I somehow ultimately knew PADMA LAKSHMI's name—not sure how) (5D: Emmy-nominated host of "Top Chef"), and I don't know Sue the TREX, and I forgot that those actresses played UHURA, and on and on. So I do, largely, BLAME MYSELF for my dissatisfaction today.

The most hilarious moment of my solve wasn't so hilarious when it was happening to me, but a few minutes later, in retrospect, upon reflection, with some distance, I could look back and laugh. That moment was the very last square I filled in. I looked at E_HIBITA and thought "that ... is not a thing ... that cannot be a thing ... ECHIBITA? EPHIPBITA? What in the ...? And what could someone named 'Sue' be with the letter pattern TRE_? Is she TREF? omigod is she a TREE? EEHIBITA? That can't be right ... [checks all crosses] ... nothing else is wrong, what is Happeninggggg ... . . . . oh." It's an X. X marks the spot. T [dash] REX / EXHIBIT [space] A. Wow, parsing that cross, where both answers have single-letter parts (the T in TREX, the A in EXHIBIT A) and where both answers have (to me) confusing clues ... that was a bizarrely perfect pothole. Thankfully, when I got it, I *understood* the answers in both directions, so at least I had a satisfactory feeling of completion. Sometimes you struggle and then you get your answer but you don't really *get* it, you know? It's actually amusing to me how bad I screwed that last box up. I only wish the rest of the solve was as entertaining as my own incompetence. QUIERO strikes me as too long for a foreign word. Do you JAPE ... something? (26D: Say mockingly) I think of it as an intransitive verb (or a noun, actually).

There's not really anything in the clue for "WE'RE ALL SET" that indicates the "WE'RE" part—in fact, "ALL SET" would work perfectly as an answer for that clue all on its own—so that was a mild bummer (28D: "Good to go!"). I had ATWIRL instead of AWHIRL at first, which was awkward but not terribly consequential (43A: Spinning). EQUABLY looks like it's missing letters (i.e. I want it to be EQUITABLY, which would also mean [In an even manner]). Hoping for somewhat more joy tomorrow. See you then.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Hemant Mehta

Relative difficulty: Medium (6:50)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: HOT-DESKING (3D: Office-sharing system, in modern lingo) —

Hot desking (sometimes called "non-reservation-based hoteling") is an office organization system which involves multiple workers using a single physical work station or surface during different time periods. The "desk" in the name refers to an office desk being shared by multiple office workers on different shifts as opposed to each staff member having their own personal desk. A primary motivation for hot desking is cost reduction through space savings—up to 30% in some cases. Hot desking is especially valuable in cities where real estate prices are high. Research has demonstrated that while there may be cost savings in office space hot desking has significant negative impacts on both productivity and staff morale. (wikipedia)

• • •

Enjoyed this one despite never having heard of HOT-DESKING, which turns out to be one of these horrid dehumanizing workplace efficiency capitalist bulls**t things that I wish didn't exist, but oh well. You gotta get your "modern lingo" from someplace, I guess. I couldn't even make sense of the clue on that one, honestly. I figured it was some app-related thing like Slack, where coworkers shared ... work things ... or maybe there was some other app or weird office system whereby you share gossip or trash the boss or whatever. I dunno. I do know that at one point I absolutely had HOT DESTINY written in there. By the way, if anyone develops an intra-office gossip app and tries to call it HOT DESTINY, me and my non-existent lawyers are coming for you. Who is Chris O'DOWD? (21D: "Bridesmaids" co-star Chris). Is he that guy I've seen in *lots* of things but I still somehow don't know what his name is? The Irish guy? Who's in the TV version of "Get Shorty?" Or in that one show ... the show ... I watched once ... damn it, what was that? (looks it up) "Family Tree!"? Yes! He was also in "The IT Crowd," which Netflix really really Really wants me to watch, but which I have never watched. Annnnnyway, yeah, I know his face very well. His name, apparently not so much. Thus, NW corner was a bit of a bear for me. NE wasn't much better until I used EDEN to get HOOD and SITE and SHARP and then REUP OIL UP (not so great, the UP/UP crossing) and FLOP and finally whooshed down the grid with SLIP OF THE TONGUE (7D: Possible insight for a psychologist). Things were much easier from there on out.

Stayed at the bottom and took care of the SW, then went up to the center and *dammit* why didn't I look at the long central Across clue earlier!?!?!? (35A: Musical alter ego of Donald Glover). Total Gimme!! Gah! If I'd somehow *started* there, who knows how much quicker I could've slayed this thing. CHILDISH GAMBINO, kapow! Then down into the SE where only RANDI (???!? ugh more modern biz-ness billionaire tech Facebook-adjacent stuff I don't care about, it's ****ing dystopic, I swear) slowed me down (44D: Businesswoman Zuckerberg, sister of Mark) (if she's legit famous, you do not need that "sister of Mark" bit). Finally finished up back in that little nook in the west, at the bottom of HOT-DESKING, where two little wrong answers, stacked (EENY over SAG instead of TINY (37A: Minute) over SOG (!?) (39A: Go soft, in a way)), had to be sorted out, and then I was done. Normal time.

[be sure to check out GRIM FANDAGO's new EP, "HOT DESTINY"]

Overall, there's very little junk in this one, and lots of fun to be had in the medium-range and longer answers, particularly WEIRDED OUT, DEPLORABLE (wink!), KNEEBOARDS, JOKE WRITER, STRIKES OUT, etc. ANDCO is a FLOP, IMHO, but very few other things made me wince (20A: End of some business names). Thorniest clue, for me, was actually 11D: Packed with plasticware, perhaps (TOGO). I imagined "Packed with" meant "Chock full of" and I couldn't imagine anything just crammed full of plasticware except maybe the upper drawer in my kitchen by the Brita. That seemed an unlikely crossword answer, though. OK, that's all, see you Sunday.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. the Bucks are the NBA team from Milwaukee, in case the NBA AGENTS clue was inscrutable to you (34D: They get big bucks from big Bucks).

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Brian Kulman

Relative difficulty: Easy (8:28)

THEME:"The Emoji Movie" — movies clued via emojis (or so I'm told—Across Lite just gave me [bracketed explanations of emojis]," LOL):

Theme answers:

"KING / KONG" (1A: With 115-Across, [gorilla] [woman] [building])
"ELF" (16A: [Santa] [city at night] [present])
"THE LORD OF THE RINGS" (23A: [jewelry] [elf] [volcano])
"HER" (26A: [man] [heart] [smartphone])
"TITANIC" (38A: [ship] [painter] [iceberg])
"CITIZEN KANE" (42A: [newspaper] [money bag] [sled])
"DUMBO" (55A: [elephant] [mouse] [circus])
"PLANET OF THE APES" (60A: [rocket] [primate] [Statue of Liberty])
"SPEED" (72A: [bus] [construction sign] [bomb])
"MARY POPPINS" (82A: [umbrella] [handbag] [merry-go-round])
"DRACULA" (87A: [coffin] [bat] [castle])
"BIG" (101A: [boy and man] [piano] [crystal ball])
"A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN" (102A: [baseball] [female symbol] [crying face])
"TED" (112A: [bear] [beer] [cigarette])
"PAN" (30D: [fairy] [skull and crossbones] [crocodile])
"ALI" (88D: [boxing glove] [butterfly] [bee])

Word of the Day: LORISES (68A: Bug-eyed primates) —

Loris is the common name for the strepsirrhine primates of the subfamily Lorinae (sometimes spelled Lorisinae) in the family Lorisidae. Loris is one genus in this subfamily and includes the slender lorises, while Nycticebus is the genus containing the slow lorises. // Lorises are nocturnal and arboreal. They are found in tropical and woodland forests of India, Sri Lanka, and parts of southeast Asia. Loris locomotion is a slow and cautious climbing form of quadrupedalism. Some lorises are almost entirely insectivorous, while others also include fruits, gums, leaves, and slugs in their diet.
Female lorises practice infant parking, leaving their infants behind in nests. Before they do this, they bathe their young with allergenic saliva that is acquired by licking patches on the insides of their elbows, which produce a mild toxin that discourages most predators, though orangutans occasionally eat lorises. (wikipedia)

• • •

Well, I'm guessing this was probably better (in the sense of "more to design specifications") in the app and on the website, because in AcrossLite (how I get all my crosswords), the theme cluing involved a comical translation of emoji back into text (the clues as I list them, above, are exactly as they appeared in my clue list). I think the text-based clues likely made this puzzle even easier than it would've been, which I'm guessing was pretty easy to start with. All the movies are super familiar mainstream hits. Slightly weird to have "STAR TREK" (also a movie) in here when it's not a themer, but no big deal. As for the theme ... it wasn't bad? It also wasn't terribly exciting. Mainly what it was was A Lot. 16 themers!?!?! It felt like the puzzle was anxious that the theme wasn't strong enough, so it tried to compensate for its one-note-ness by just *cramming* the grid with themers, many of them so short that they don't really feel like themers. Only five of these things are eight letters or longer, which is the typical minimum length of a themer, especially on a Sunday. But as I say, the films are all pretty mainstream and thus gettable. The only one I struggled to understand was "PAN"—I don't remember that as a movie title. I get that it's the story of Peter Pan, but I forgot there was a movie called just "PAN." The rest were cake. Maybe the puzzle seemed more interesting if you just had the emojis to go on. Maybe there was humor in there. From my perspective, it was just easy and not particularly cute or funny. The grid overall was smooth and I don't have any real objections to any of it. The full impact of it just didn't land, and I'm having trouble imagining that even *with* the intended emoji clues it was that joyful. But people like emojis, I guess, so ... if you loved it, fantastic! My "LOTR"-loving wife wife would like you to know, however, that [jewelry] [elf] [volcano] is an awful clue, as "THE ELF DOES NOT THROW THE JEWELRY IN THE VOLCANO." Also, what is up with the clue on "A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN" (102A: [baseball] [female symbol] [crying face])? The quote—the very famous quote—is, "There's *no* crying in baseball!" That's the quote. It's iconic. There should be a 🚫 symbol in that clue!

Weird to base your puzzle on a movie that was by all accounts horrendous. "The Emoji Movie" won Worst Picture, Worst Director, and Worst Screenplay at the 2017 Razzies ... And yet it made over $200 million. ANYway ... I did a weird Chutes & Ladders solve because of KING / KONG. Started in NW as usual, but when I figured out the second half of the answer was going to be KONG, way on the other side of the grid, I went down there to fill it in and ... never came back. I just solved my way up from there. Felt like I was all over the map, solving scattershot, rather than my usual orderly self, but the puzzle was so easy that solving path and solving style and all that really didn't matter. My main difficulty with this puzzle was LORISES. The difficulty arose from my forgetting that there was any animal called LORISES. Even after I got it, it looked wrong. There's nothing else that caused me the least bit of difficulty. One important final comment: you can take notorious racist dips**t NIGEL f***ing Farage and shove him ... wherever you like. Just not in any future grids, that would be fantastic. As a clue writer, and especially as an editor (the one with final say over clues), you have a choice of NIGELs. Your choice of this particulary NIGEL tells me you make bad choices. Get bent.

On the Clipboard:

Some really interesting puzzles this week outside of NYTXW-ville.

Anna Shechtman's Monday New Yorker puzzle had some wonderful answers, like PICKUP LINE and PINKWASH, but I especially loved it for RACHEL CUSK, whose book of essays, Coventry, I was, coincidentally, in the middle of reading when I solved the puzzle. Such a great writer. Thumbs up for Anna's puzzle *and* RACHEL CUSK.
Monday's Universal puzzle was by Joon Pahk and Ann Haas, and I thought it was the best themed puzzle of the day—very simple, with familiar phrases imagined as bad Yelp reviews, e.g. [Bad Yelp review for a malt shop?] = NO GREAT SHAKES, [Bad Yelp review for a bakery?] = BUNS OF STEEL. I was thrilled to find out later that Ann is Joon's goddaughter, a high school student, and this puzzle was her debut!
The Fireball this week was entitled "Fifteen Divided by Five," by editor Peter Gordon. Premise: every themer is 15 letters long and made up of five three-letter answers. I thought the puzzle was OK, but what I really liked were my wrong answers on a couple of the themers. [Longtime British television series presented by Phil Drabble featuring lots of sheep] is apparently "ONE MAN AND HIS DOG"; I thought (given the sheep), it was "ONE MAN AND HIS RAM"! Also, apparently Lillian Jackson Braun wrote a 1986 novel titled "THE CAT WHO SAW RED"—I thought it was "THE CAT WHO SAW GOD" (mine's better, imho)

The Amerian Values Crossword Club (AVXC) puzzle was called "Swingers" and had the names of monkeys hidden inside wacky theme answers (with the revealer MONKEY IN THE MIDDLE). Now, hidden (or embedded) word puzzles aren't anything new, but usually the word you're hiding is something short. This puzzle was remarkable for how outlanding the hiding monkey names were. MACAQUE is hidden inside the ridiculous answer TAYLOR MAC AQUEDUCT. Then TAMARIN is hidden inside GUATAMA RINGTONE. I always say that with "wackiness"-driven puzzles, you need to go big or go home. Well, you might love or hate this one, but it definitely went very big in the wackiness department. BATMAN DRILL BITS!
On a much less wacky but still elegant note, the Tuesday Feb. 4 USA Today ("Toymaking" by Karl Ni) sneaks up on you with its simplicity. Themers don't really seem to cohere until you get to the revealer, BUILD-A-BEAR, and realize that the last words in all the themers combine to make ("build") a very famous bear: PAD, DING, TON! I love artful easy puzzles, and this was definitely one of those.
Lastly, a puzzle that was both beautiful and infuriating. The Chronicle of Higher Ed. puzzle by Joanne Sullivan ("Switch-Hitters") featured famous titles clued as having come out in two different years. Turns out the different dates relate to when the title came out as a book (earlier date) and as a film (later date). The revealer is the real stunner here: you get ___ CLUB, and both BOOK and FILM work (i.e. the Downs are all plausible when either BOOK or FILM is in place). The infuriating part was the themer clue, which was impossible to parse—just horribly written, so instead of having the great aha moment that the puzzle deserved, I had ... no moment. Had to go look up what the clue was getting at at crosswordfiend.com. Such a shame to ruin a brilliant puzzle with a botched revealer clue. So important to stick the landing. But still, conceptually, this was great work from Joanne.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. that NIGEL clue was *not* the constructor's, which is *not* surprising 🙁

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Bruce Haight

Relative difficulty: Medium for me (maybe slightly harder-than-usual for some, tho ... this fill, yeesh)

THEME: corny movie puns—maybe a nod to the Oscars (happening roughly now, i.e. Sunday night) — familiar non-movie phrases clued as if they related to movies (i.e. wackily):

Theme answers:

WORTH A SHOT (17A: Suitable for moviemaking?)
A LITTLE EXTRA (23A: Movie munchkin, maybe?)
CREW CUT (37A: Movie clip where the grips, boom operator and gaffer all appear?)
SETTLE A SCORE (47A: Finalize the music for the movie?)
DOUBLE TAKE (57A: Redo of a movie scene?)

Word of the Day: ALEC Waugh (63A: Author Waugh) —

Alexander Raban Waugh (8 July 1898 – 3 September 1981), was a British novelist, the elder brother of the better-known Evelyn Waugh and son of Arthur Waugh, author, literary critic, and publisher. His first wife was Barbara Jacobs (daughter of the writer William Wymark Jacobs), his second wife was Joan Chirnside and his third wife was Virginia Sorenson, author of the Newbery Medal–winning Miracles on Maple Hill. (wikipedia)

• • •

Wow this is quite poor. If its release didn't roughly coincide with the Oscars, it would be truly inexplicable. It's just corny film puns. You can do this kind of thing ad infinitum with other words, like SET or CAST or what have you. But why would you? Why? Also, why is the fill this bad? This stale? This unpolished and implausibly carelessly clued. For instance, if you're going to put a very-much *not* "Big name athletic shoes" in your puzzle, first, don't say it's a "Big name," and second, don't cross that last letter with the last letter of a very very very unfamous author when that last letter could easily (Easily) be an "X." The only people who have ever heard of ALEC Waugh are people who have been solving puzzles for decades, i.e. from well before ALEC Baldwin was legit famous ... but then there was always ALEC Guinness, so I have no idea how ALEC Waugh ever, ever convinced anyone that he was puzzle-worthy. I mean, look at the first paragraph of his wikipedia page (above). The writer basically gives up on defining him in relation to any "writing" you've actually heard of and resorts instead to defining him in relation to three (3!) other authors, all of whom are more accomplished, two of whom Are From His Own Damn Family. Clue should've been [Third most successful Waugh]. The point is, cluing ALEC as a Waugh in *this* particular spot (i.e. crossing ETONIC at the "C") is objectively bad editing. It's Monday! Please pay attention to what you're doing.

Everything about this puzzle is just old, in the sense of stuck and stale. What the !?!?! is MOIL?! Fittingly, it is [Drudgery, in older usage]. This puzzle knows a lot about drudgery, as well as older usage. Everything from CABIT to AIWA to EKES to ALEC to ETAIL to ETONIC to ESAU feels musty. AWS just feels bad. The whole top row is garbage, and THUG is a problematic word that you can *easily* avoid (6A: Mafia enforcer, e.g.). UNGER is also something familiar much much more to older than to younger solvers (12D: Felix of "The Odd Couple"). Totally fine to put "Odd Couple" in your puzzle, but ... there's just not a lot here for anyone under 60. But if yesterday's emoji-based puzzle was just too youthful for you, well, here's your antidote, I guess. Me, I'll take the disease

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Neil Padrick Wilson and Jeff Chen

Relative difficulty: Medium (in the mid/high 3's)

THEME: FLYING / COLORS (33A: With 35-Across, complete success ... or a hint to 18-, 23-, 46- and 51-Across) — things that feature literal FLYING / COLORS:

Theme answers:

LASER SHOW (18A: Lighting display at many a rock concert)
RAINBOW FLAG (23A: Symbol of pride)
GLITTER BOMB (46A: Comeuppance for a package thief)
PAINTBALL (51A: Sport that can leave you with welts)

Word of the Day: GLITTER BOMB (46A) —

Glitter bombing is an act of protest in which activists throw glitter on people at public events. Glitter bombers have frequently been motivated by, though not limited to, their targets' rape apologism or opposition to same-sex marriage.
Some legal officials argue glitter bombing is technically assault and battery. It is possible for glitter to enter the eyes or nose and cause damage to the cornea or other soft tissues potentially irritating them or leading to infection, depending on the size of the glitter. Whether a prosecutor would pursue the charges depends on a number of factors. (wikipedia)

• • •

[Comeuppance for a package thief]???? Please see the Word of the Day definition, above, to understand why this was the clue I struggled with the most today. I know glitter bombing only as a form of political protest. Are there really people who devote time to turning the foiling of porch pirates into a lavish art project? What insanely narrow context is this and why not just go with the much more common meaning of this word, especially since it's a modern / new term. Does the package literally explode in their face... with glitter? That still sounds dangerous. Bizarre. Seriously, just google [define glitter bomb] and every page will tell you it's a form of political protest. Too bad they bricked this clue so badly—the theme is actually very inventive. [update: I'm told this is some genre of youtube prank video ... ok] The fill in this puzzle, however, is all over the place. The long Downs give the grid much needed pizzazz, though the most original long Down, IT'S A BIG IF, feels out of tune (5D: "Things may well not happen the way you suppose")—you'd say THAT'S A BIG IF in response to someone else's "if." That may seem a small distinction, but not to my ear. I like what that answer was trying to do, though. Did not like the garbage dump of fill in the NW (ADWARE LEERAT singular ARREAR), but once you get out of there, things even out, and the objectionable stuff is less dense. Ultimately, this one is wobbly, but it holds up.

I've been in universities, and English departments specifically, for my whole adult life, and I can count the number of times I've heard the term "Lit CRIT" to describe a "class" (or, really, anything) on no hands. OK, maybe one, but honestly, it's not a thing. I promise you. It keeps showing up in crosswords because of inertia (this is suuuuuuuuuuch a common phenomenon), but it's good to reality-check your clues and answers every decade or so, and every time I see this clue on CRIT, I wince. I also wince because CRIT is just bad fill. So, double wince. There's a rapper called Big K.R.I.T. Maybe try him.

Jarring also to be told that I'LL BET is a thing when two-to-three hundred times a year (roughly) I'm asked to believe that I BET is a thing. What's next, I WILL BET! I SHALL BET! BET SHALL I! I WILL PUT A NOT INSIGNIFICANT WAGER ON THIS EVENT! Another word no one uses ever: OATEN (57A: Like granola, largely). We all tacitly agree to let it go 'cause we've seen it before and are 99% sure it's in a dictionary somewhere, and maybe we're just secretly glad it's not OATY (yes, OATY happens). But OATEN is a THUD for me. Every time. POPO is real enough slang, but somehow in the "mouth" of the puzzle it always feels ... well, like this:

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Rich Proulx

Relative difficulty: Easy (3:23, first thing in the morning)

THEME: GOD (62A: What each set of circled letters is, relative to the first word in its answer) — non-consecutive circled letters contain name of the god of [first word in the answer]. Thus

Theme answers:

LOVE CONQUERS ALL (17A: Optimistic maxim from Virgil) contains VENUS
DEATH AND TAXES (27A: Reliable things, to Ben Franklin) contains HADES
THUNDERSTORMS (43A: They make loud noises during showers) contains THOR
WAR TO END ALL WARS (54A: Overly optimistic 1910s appellation) contains ARES

Word of the Day: TENT SHOW (6D: Circus) —

noun
an exhibition or performance, especially a circus, presented in a tent. (dictionary.com)

• • •

Definitely a step up from most non-consecutive-circled-letter puzzles, because of the added first-word element, but those ragged circles are still ragged circles, and finding words like that inside of long phrases just has never impressed me very much. I think the theme is good enough, but the execution has some bumpiness. You've got a very Eurocentric GOD assortment, with the Norse god really standing out like an odd duck among the Greek/Romans. Also, your revealer is just .... GOD? That's it? There has to be a better way to do this. This is one of those days when having a *title* on weekday puzzles would really really help. Then you can suggest the whole GOD thing in the title without having to spoil everything with a painfully straightforward revealer and its clunky clue. Or ... maybe this one would still need a revealer, even with a title ... but if so, it needs something better than what it's got. Also, smaller issue, but it's *THE* WAR TO END ALL WARS, and the clue for it should definitely have "with 'The'" tacked on to the end. And speaking of clunky clues—that one (54A: Overly optimistic 1910s appellation). The word "appellation" would like to object to being used in this vague, absurd way. So would "1910s." I'm sure it's hard to clue this answer without using the word "WAR," but try harder. Oh, and one more thing about themer clues: DEATH AND TAXES are "certain" (in the Ben Franklin quotation), not merely "reliable." Also also, "Ben." Why the informality. Just say "Franklin" or use his full first name, unless the shortening has something to do with the answer. Pay more attention to cluing!

Clue on TENT SHOW is bad, in that a [Circus] is a *kind* of TENT SHOW. [Circus, for one] would work. The editing has not been tight at all lately. Not that big a fan of a single ALTOID, but I guess it's fair. Better than CERT (is that the singular of CERTS?), and definitely better than, say, ARREAR. Fill gets a little ragged in places, esp. the SW (EPI ALLA ATAD REA AMO), but I very much liked BAT GUANO and SIDELONG. I guess I've heard THE OLDS before (8D: Parents and grandparents, in teen lingo), but thankfully my own teen daughter (who is, let's be clear, a big fan of giving me s***t for all kinds of reasons) has never used that horrible condescending phrase. Well, not around me, anyway :) Lost time trying to parse that phrase, and also writing in ETNA instead of OSSA (26D: Mount near Olympus) (nice sort-of GOD tie-in!). Not much else to slow me down here. Struggled most with the last answer (why does this always happen!?), which was "I MEANT" (59A: "Let me try that again ..."). Nothing in the clue suggested the act of speaking, so I had to run all the short Downs in that SW corner to finally put the final nail in this one. Overall, a qualified thumbs-up.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Amanda Chung and Karl Ni

Relative difficulty: Medium (6:06, very much not trying to speed ... I can't speed-solve before 6am, and it's not even 5)

THEME: ROLL THE DICE (56A: Take a chance ... or a hint to the letters in the circled squares) — letters D, I, C, E appear in the "cube"-shaped circled squares, in a different configuration each time (because the DICE is "rolling") ... each "DICE" configuration is part of a long Across that enters the "cube" at the lower left corner, jumps up to pick up the top two letters, then comes down for the bottom right letter before continuing Across (well, one answer just ends there at the "cube")

Theme answers:

IN-SERVICE DAYS (17A: Times when teachers go to school but students don't)
SAUCE DISH (23A: Vessel for dipping at a dinner table)
REVERSE DICTIONARY (36A: Reference that arranges words by concept rather than alphabetically)
SHAVED ICE (51A: Cousin of a sno-cone)

Word of the Day: BELAY (31A: "___ that order!" ("Star Trek" command)) —

2. nautical : STOP, CANCEL
belay that last order (merriam-webster.com)

• • •

Really wanted to like this one. Have enjoyed work from these constructors before, so was excited to dig into this, but while there is fun to be had along the way today, I found this one clunked as much as it hummed. We can start with the theme itself, which feels like something I've seen before, conceptually, but ... that's not too big a deal, maybe the constructors will make it new and interesting. But just spinning four letters like this, and (I'm pretty sure) even the DICE thing has been done, so as soon as I get that revealer and realize all those square configurations are just gonna be DICE boxes, I'm already a little let down. Actually, I was let down earlier on two fronts. First, SAUCE DISH. That is ... not exactly a sizzling start. I can kind of imagine what one of those is, but it feels like such an odd, generic, non-specific phrase ... one that I basically inferred from SAUC- ... I can't really dispute the thingness of SAUCE DISH, but it was a disappointment. I like for themers to elicit a "ooh, good one!" not just an "uh, sure, OK." Which brings me to the next let-down, which is that I got the theme concept *immediately*. Very easy to figure out what was going on with SAUCE DISH when SAUCI- wasn't going to go anywhere, and those circles are basically screaming "look at us!" I was hoping the remaining circle configurations were going to hold new things, but then I got the revealer and realized it was just gonna be DICE. And they were gonna roll. I feel like there's some kind of REVERSE AHA MOMENT here, where I get the gimmick early, am not terribly intrigued by it, but still have the rest of the damn puzzle in front of me. The one thing I kinda liked about the theme—the fact that the answer went up and over each "DICE"—was the one thing that didn't seem in keeping with the "DICE" theme. The "rolling" happens as the "DICE" rotates one click counterclockwise at each stage as it "rolls" down the grid. NO IDEA how the up-and-over theme answer thing is DICE-y, but I'll take the added theme feature, since it's kind of fun. I also like how the "DICE" letters are always broken across two words in the themer. Nice added touch.

The last truly disappointing thing today was the phrase IN-SERVICE DAYS. I've been married to a NYS high school teacher for the better part of two decades and I have never heard this term. She definitely has "teacher conference days," where students are off but teachers meet for various reasons, and maybe I've heard "service days" (maybe...) but IN-SERVICE DAYS, sigh, no. I'm sure someone somewhere calls them that, or this answer wouldn't be here. But that answer clanked for me worse than SAUCE DISH. That was (consequently) the last and toughest part of the grid for me. Oh, and the grid ... so choppy and fussy. So much short stuff, which meant so much not-great stuff like -EAN and EINK and RGS and AER and on and on. I actually didn't dislike this puzzle as much as this first paragraph would suggest, but the execution was just off on this one, for me.

[PRIMA is HEP]

I have never seen a REVERSE DICTIONARY, and am not sure why you would use one, but I still liked that answer better than any of the others. It's snappy. And original. And I like how, in general, the clues were spiced (i.e. toughened) up in the short fill (probably because an abundance of short fill tends to make puzzles very easy, and the gimmick today isn't terribly hard to uncover, but it's Thursday, which is supposed to be a toughish solving day, so ... spicy! I actually had to think about the clues on little things like RIPE, NINTH, SALTS, HDTV, CENSUS, TED, etc. Really wanted to like SCIFI BOOK, and I see that that is a term people use, but it's SCI FI NOVEL, or should be, esp. where Clarke is concerned, even if he did occasionally publish a collection of short stories (8D: Many an arthur C. Clarke work). The clue says "work," singular, and the name of the "work" is not "book," it's "novel." If you look at his wikipedia page, the "Works" section is broken down into "novels,""short story collections," and "non-fiction," not "books"). Today really was mostly about my being irked that so many things felt off—not horrible, just wide of the mark.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Daniel Larsen

Relative difficulty: Easy (very) (4:16)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: KORN (33D: Grammy-winning metal band with a tasty-sounding name) —

Korn (stylized as KoЯn) is an American nu metal band from Bakersfield, California, formed in 1993. The band is notable for pioneering the nu metal genre and bringing it into the mainstream. [...] The band first experienced mainstream success with Follow the Leader (1998) and Issues (1999), both of which debuted at number one on the Billboard200. The band's mainstream success continued with Untouchables (2002), Take a Look in the Mirror (2003) and See You on the Other Side (2005). [...] As of 2012, Korn had sold more than 35 million records worldwide. Twelve of the band's official releases have peaked in the top ten of the Billboard 200, eight of which have peaked in the top five. Seven official releases are certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), two are certified double platinum, one is certified triple platinum, one is certified five times platinum and two are certified Gold. [...] Korn has earned two Grammy Awards out of eight nominations and two MTV Video Music Awards out of eleven nominations. (wikipedia)

• • •

Whoa, there's an *OLD* WELSH? I'm a medievalist and I did not know that. Good thing I have the capacity for inference! I liked this puzzle a lot but then again I *destroyed* this puzzle so I'm not sure how much my warm feelings are due to the intrinsic goodness of the puzzle and how much are due to any solver's natural affection for a Friday puzzle they can take out easily. Do I like you 'cause you're good or 'cause you're easy? That is the question. I'm pretty sure the puzzle is just good, though. Lots and lots of varied, interesting longer fill, from science fiction (HOME PLANET over SPACE OPERA! So good...) to physics to math to music. It's the music that is probably going to separate the very fast solves from the merely normal fast solves, and nothing is going to put solvers into different speed camps faster than 1A: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame band led by Iggy Pop (THE STOOGES). Pop culture is always a potential divider, and since this one's in such a prime position, getting it right away is particularly valuable. For me, it was a total gimme, and I got six Downs off of it right away (THIS HINT ETTA ORCA EDSEL SEE). Between knowing that and knowing KORN, I feel like I had a distinct pop cultural advantage today. LONI Anderson and "LA BAMBA" and ELENA Ferrante, also in my wheelhouse. This one just sang to me. I even got the Beaufort Scale answer lickety split, and I wasn't even sure DEAD CALM was a real category, but look at that: real (27A: 0 on the Beaufort Scale). I just got lucky today. Everything fell my way.

["There's no escape / Without a scrape ..."]

Here were my struggles and my irks: I really think the phrase trips off the tongue best as THERE'S NO ESCAPE. "THERE IS" feels oddly formal and off. PALSY is pretty olde-timey and probably needs "-WALSY" to be complete and anyway, it looks more like an affliction than a term meaning "Chummy," so that's mildly depressing. I didn't think we could go lower on the ALEC scale than Waugh, but here's Douglas-Home! Actually, I think he outranks Waugh, as he actually did something noteworthy. But I'm always happy to discover new ALECs. Add him to Guinness and Baldwin and the kid from "Black Stallion" (I think .... [looks it up] ... yessssss!!! Man, I haven't seen that clue for ALEC in eons but somehow that little fact still lives in some dark corner of my head; weird). I can't believe I fell for the old "Capital" misdirection gag, but boy did I (28D: Capital of Latvia) (EURO). That's a pretty cheap gag, as Latvia's actual capital is also four letters (RIGA), but I guess you gotta try to throw speed bumps in here where you can. SUMP is a very ugly word and I hope I never see it in my puzzle again (34A: Basement feature). I actually had AUDIO BOOMS in there at first for 32A: Some road trip entertainment (I think I was thinking "equipment" instead of "entertainment," like maybe some TV show goes on the "road" and brings along boom mikes? I dunno. But KORN saved me. Anyway, that's all. Good work, everyone. Wait, nope, one more thing. ONER is was and always will be atrocious (56D: Remarkable person). Retire, ONER! OK, now we're done.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Randolph Ross

Relative difficulty: Easy (5:39 at a leisurely, non-speed pace)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: TORTOLA (18A: Largest of the British Virgin Islands) —

Tortola /tɔːrˈtoʊlə/ is the largest and most populated of the British Virgin Islands, a group of islands that form part of the archipelago of the Virgin Islands.^[2] It has a surface area of 55.7 square kilometres (21.5 square miles) with a total population of 23,908, with 9,400 residents in Road Town. Mount Sage is its highest point at 530 metres (1,740 feet) above sea level.
Although the British Virgin Islands (BVI) are under the British flag, it uses the US dollar as its official currency due to its proximity to and frequent trade with the US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. The island is home to many offshore companies that do business worldwide. Financial services are a major part of the country's economy.
On 6 September 2017, the British Virgin Islands were extensively damaged by Hurricane Irma. The most severe destruction was on Tortola. News reports over the next day or two described the situation as "devastation". (wikipedia)

• • •

Bob KEESHAN

This puzzle felt like maybe the constructor was reliving the '60s and maybe I really didn't need to know all the details. Like maybe he went AWOL during Vietnam and then met a girl at a diner and they agreed to hook up later at a party ("IT'S A DATE") and then it's all kind of a blur of FREE LOVE and PHONE SEX and lots and lots of HASHEESH and TEA, i.e. smoking cigarettes and watching Captain K-angaroo (Bob KEESHAN!) and honestly don't ask me how SUCK DRY and VEINY SALAMI are involved because I don't want to think about it. This thing felt so conspicuously and deliberately hotted up that when I got to 20D: What are depicted in some blue prints? and had THE SMU- filled in, I knew "blue prints" was a misdirection, but I was certain, *certain*, that that misdirection involved SMUT! If it's "blue" it's gotta be ... THE SMUTTS!? THE SMUTTY!? THE SMUT FX!?" By the way, I do not recommend googling [THE SMURFS smut], as you are (probably?) not going to like what you find. Anyway, despite the high TMI levels in this puzzle, it was probably about as much as I've ever liked a Randolph Ross puzzle, even if it was almost painfully rooted in times of yore. Still, there were too many awkward crosswordy answers and alt-spellings for the puzzle to be truly enjoyable. I felt like I tore through it simply because I'd been doing puzzles for thirty years, i.e. things like SELENE and EOCENE and TAPIR and ACTA and ADE and ESTERS and what not were reflex fills for me. I do enjoy destroying a Saturday puzzle, and the sex and drugs definitely woke me up, but it's still a mixed bag overall, I think.

["... smokin' cigarettes and watching Captain (kang) KAAAANGaroo, now don't tell me ..."]

Watched a character on "Ozark" OD on OPIOIDS last night, so that answer was weirdly fresh (48A: 21st-century health menace). I saw someone online mention that MEASLES fit in that same space, which is depressing (the fact that you might consider MEASLES for this clue, not the fact that it fit). Does Randolph Ross know a guy name "LEV" and is it his birthday because he's getting a lot of leverage out of that letter string today, especially in the SW where it's a LEVfest. Enjoy the FREE LEV, everyone. LEVIES! LEVERETS! ALEVELS! And then later, just when you thought you were LEV'd out: ELEVENTH! Happy birthday, Lev, wherever you are.

I will confess that I had no idea what TORTOLA was and I would've guessed food if you'd just showed me the word. Needed every cross but it didn't matter because that NE corner was so easy. I got in there off of just the -EX in PHONE SEX and took it all down in no time. PELAGE gave me a little more trouble because I really thought that was another word for the sea. The adjective "pelagic" comes to mind. What am I thinking of ... (consults dictionary) ... well, I'm right about "pelagic": "of, relating to, or living or occurring in the open sea: OCEANIC" (m-w). And PELAGE does indeed mean what the puzzle says it means ("the hairy covering of a mammal"). Weird that those words are etymologically unrelated: PELAGE from Latin via Middle French poil (hair) and "pelagic" ultimately from Greek pelagos (sea). That's all for today, students. See you tomorrow.

[CHRISSIE!]

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Sam Ezersky

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (10:06)

THEME:"NUMBER THEORY"— on four different lines in the puzzle are numbers in foreign languages and also familiar phrases that contain that same number (only as an English word, not a foreign number). The point is that some foreign numbers look identical to English words. Elsewhere in the grid are the four different languages in question, and then there's a revealer:LOST IN / TRANSLATION (90A: With 92-Across, alternative title for this puzzle)

Theme answers:

QUINCE JELLY (24A: Relative of marmalade) / QUINCE (which is FIFTEEN (see 26A) in SPANISH (20A))
DOBBY THE HOUSE ELF (46A: Whom Harry Potter frees from serving Draco Malfoy's family) / ELF (which is ELEVEN (see 45A) in GERMAN (34A))
SEIZE / POWER (59A: With 60-Across, take control after a coup) / SEIZE (which is SIXTEEN (see 61A) in FRENCH (84A))
DUE TO THE FACT THAT (71A: Because) / DUE (which is TWO (see 75A) in ITALIAN (104A)

Word of the Day: "DR. I.Q." (1D: Title host of radio's first major quiz show) —

Dr. I.Q. (aka Dr. I.Q., the Mental Banker and Doctor I.Q.) is a radio and television quiz program. Remembered as radio's first major quiz show, it popularized the catch phrase "I have a lady in the balcony, Doctor."

• • •

I'm actually startled at how poor this is. Aside from the stray interesting answer (say, DOBBY THE HOUSE ELF), this one was a bemusing slog from start to finish. Never cared once about the theme. Never really *got* what the theme thought it was doing, why the theme thought it was interesting. I just filled in a bunch of languages pretty easily (without ever having to check the cross-references) and then wrote in repeated words a bunch of times. Because that's what this is—a weirdly elaborate thematic excuse for having words appear twice. All that space wasted on useless stuff like ITALIAN SPANISH FRENCH etc. who cares? We know what language they're in. The revealer was pathetic, in that LOST IN / TRANSLATION is not catchy or kicky or even very accurate. Yes, there are foreign words for numbers that are also (with different pronunciations) English words: whoopty bleepin' doo! And for that I have to endure stuff like MAESTRI (no one says this) and GENYER (fewer than no one says this—seriously, negative people). Gen Xer, definitely a thing, GENYER, ack, no. Reverse-stacking DETOO / ARTOO, awkward. AMUN (with a "U"?) RA, awkward, EXEQUY, what the hexequy is that?! ABAFT? ODIC? SOMNI-? OOOO? ITTY? ACITY? How does this one pass muster? How? EFFS all around.

DOBBY THE HOUSE ELF is a memorable character, but I always felt bad for his brother, DOOBIE the House Elf. Remember when Harry fired DOOBIE just for being late to work a few times and failing that one drug test? Uncool, Harry, you narc. Moving on to other parts of the puzzle ... AKRONOH is a crutch. It's like if ERIEPA and USOFA had a horrid cursed baby. If you do this with Akron, you can do it with any city in the country, and that slope feels slippery and horrible. USE THIS? I guess someone might say that, sure, but it doesn't feel very tight. I do like WAS A BI PEA, but only because I think it's important to represent the full spectrum of legume sexuality in puzzles. Not all peas are either straight or gay, you know.

Nothing more to say about this one. On The Clipboard this week, I don't have too much to rave about. My favorite themed puzzle of the week was probably Patrick Blindauer's "T Time" (for the American Values Club Crossword (AVCX)), which featured five different crossings that formed the shape of "T"s and crossed at the letter "T." Clean grid, lots of fresh fill, neatly done. Favorite themeless of the week was Natan Last's New Yorker puzzle, which was glutted with great long answers: BECHDEL TEST, SPEED READERS, PROM KINGS, SWEATS IT OUT, OF MICE AND MEN, etc. Those New Yorker puzzles are reliably good, but this one was exceptional.

Until tomorrow,

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. I just saw "Parasite" so my mind is still reeling and also my standards for good art are kinda through the roof right now. I feel real bad for the next movie I see.

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Constructor: Sally Hoelscher

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (2:52)

THEME: recent First Ladies, clued via their memoirs for some reason

Theme answers:

LAURA BUSH (17A: Author of the memoir "Spoken from the Heart" (2010))
ROSALYNN CARTER (23A: Author of the memoir "First Lady from Plains" (1984))
MICHELLE OBAMA (36A: Author of the memoir "Becoming" (2018))
HILLARY CLINTON (47A: Author of the memoir "Living History" (2003))
BETTY FORD (59A: Author of the memoir "The Times of My Life" (1978))

Word of the Day: NUBBLY (5D: Rough and textured, as fabric) —

adj. nub·bli·er, nub·bli·est
Rough or irregular; textured: the nubbly surface of raw silk.
(thefreedictionary.com)

• • •

The word is NUBBY. I spent more time, far and away more time, trying to grasp this answer than I did on anything else (it's an easy puzzle). That damn extra "L," yikes. If you think this is just a straightforward matter, LOL, here is the literal first page of hits when I google [define nubbly]:

Notice that NUBBY (no "L") is the third dang hit, and KNUBBLY (what the!?) is fourth. If this tells you nothing else, it's that none of these are words and they should never be used ever, amen. The fact that NUBBLY is standing alongside GLUEY (?) doesn't help matters. If you want to keep a low profile, don't associate with known felons (I see you, GLUEY). But let's talk about the theme: it is pretty weak. A bunch of First Ladies' names can be arranged symmetrically and so ... here we are. The memoir title thing gives it ... an angle, I guess ... but this was just fill-in-the-First-Lady. Pretty boring. And the fill was definitely subpar throughout, especially in the south. Those corners are pretty inexcusable. A little editing elbow grease woulda gotten the muck right out, but that's not really how this editing team rolls. AGA / AMESS is in fact a mess, and the SE, woof, with MDSE x/w ISS over DEE, it's already weak even before the absolutely baffling and unforgivable OVUM / OVOID crossing. Those words are related. They have the same root. What are you even doing here?! Absolutely not. I wouldn't even put them in the same grid together, let alone *cross* them. Then there's the glut of other GLUEY stuff throughout the grid like EKE ERMAS USAIR RAH ESSEN SITU ATA AME etc. There is indeed A LOT OF it. This one needed the theme to be snappier and the grid to be a lot more polished overall. And that is that.

Had I'M SORRY before OH, SORRY (30A: "I apologize!") but beyond that (and the whole NUBBLY fiasco), no significant errors or hold-ups.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: John Guzzetta

Relative difficulty: Easy (3:16 first thing in the a.m.—before 5 a.m., to be precise-ish—is very fast for a Tuesday)

THEME: PARALLEL PARKS (36A: Does a driving test task — or an apt description of the five circled diagonals in this puzzle) — U.S. National Parks run parallel to one another in the circled diagonals:

THE PARKS:

DENALI (Alaska)
GLACIER (Montana)
REDWOOD (California)
ACADIA (Maine)
ARCHES (Utah)

Word of the Day: Glacier National Park —

Glacier National Park is an American national park located in northwestern Montana, on the Canada–United States border, adjacent to the Canadian provinces of Alberta and British Columbia. The park encompasses over 1 million acres (4,000 km²) and includes parts of two mountain ranges (sub-ranges of the Rocky Mountains), over 130 named lakes, more than 1,000 different species of plants, and hundreds of species of animals. This vast pristine ecosystem is the centerpiece of what has been referred to as the "Crown of the Continent Ecosystem," a region of protected land encompassing 16,000 square miles (41,000 km²). (wikipedia)

• • •

I have surprisingly few feelings about this one. I think the theme idea is very clever. Slightly odd to see a theme based around U.S. National Parks that does *not* feature either YELLOWSTONE or YOSEMITE (what I think of as the two most iconic U.S. National Parks), but these five parks are all very well known; Glacier was the only one whose location I had to look up, though it's probably more famous than ACADIA, which I know about only because it's in the northeast (like me) and I once looked into going there (still never been to Maine, weirdly). So what we have are five parks, which form a slightly arbitrary but still very solid set, and you cannot argue with their parallelness. So the revealer actually involves wordplay, and doesn't just sit there pointing at the themers like the world's most bored and useless tour guide. If you'd simply described the theme to me, I'd say "sounds nifty" (maybe not in those exact words). But the experience of solving this one was rather flat. The main problem was that the puzzle was soooooo easy that I actually never noticed the letters in the circled squares. Didn't have to. I hesitated significantly only once, when trying to navigate the GARDENED / TERRARIA crossing early on (wanted TERRARIA to be a different word I couldn't call to mind, which I realized, after I was finally done, was MENAGERIE). After getting out of the NW corner, I made one error (AIR for ACT at 22D: Something a false person puts on) but otherwise filled in the grid pretty much as fast as I could read the clues. Is my speed / theme-neglect the puzzle's fault? Well, yeah, kinda. Make people have to notice the theme elements! This is especially important in a puzzle that Doesn't Have Any Theme Answers (beyond the revealer). Solving this was like solving a very weak themeless (weak because the fill is constrained by a theme, which does exist, but is simply invisible to me). I actually wouldn't have minded this as a Wednesday or even Thursday puzzle with (much) tougher cluing.

As for that fill, it's passable. There are definitely unattractive moments (GARS OMAHAN UNS SSA) but I know how hard it is to fill a puzzle with fixed diagonal words / phrases shooting through it. Seems like it should be easier than filling a grid with normal fixed Across/Down themers, but it is *not*. It's harder. The way to look at it is, you might have technically the same number of theme *squares* but the number of *answers* you've now conscripted into your theme scheme goes through the roof. Hardly any answers dont have at least one fixed theme letter in them. This makes building the grid very tough. Normally in a corner you can tear it all out and start again if you don't like it, but once you decide on these themers and this grid shape, you're locked in to those diagonals and they are touching evvvvvverything. It's messy and annoying and frustrating. This is not to defend junky fill at all. Only to explain that filling this grid is probably harder than it looks, and the amount of junk in this grid didn't seem any higher than the amount in any other NYTXW grid. Again, the experience of filling it all in was not exactly scintillating, but I'm actually surprised the grid didn't buckle in a much more visible and alarming way. In short, I've done worse. The theme is conceptually strong. I like CERBERUS (notably untouched by theme letters!) (64A: Dog guarding the gates of the underworld). There's more good than bad here.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Alex Eaton-Salners

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (my typing was alarmingly poor—I think I typo'd ever entry somehow) (4:11)

THEME: SWIPE LEFT / SWIPE RIGHT (60A: Reject romantically ... or a hint to the starts of the answers to 18- and 35-Across, phonetically / 65A: Show interest romantically ... or a hint to the ends of the answers to 20- and 44-Across, phonetically) — language from the Tinder dating app, where you SWIPE RIGHT on people you're interested in and SWIPE LEFT on those you're not. Here, in the puzzle, "swipe" must be interpreted as a word meaning "take illegally"—you will find words that mean "take illegally" (or sound like they do when you say them aloud) on the "LEFT" or "RIGHT" side of their respective answers

Theme answers:

LYFT DRIVER (18A: One competing with Uber) (actually lots of LYFT DRIVERs are also Uber drivers, I think) (here, "lift" means "swipe" ... and LYFT is at *front* of its answer, so it's a SWIPE LEFT)
BLUE STEEL (20A: Iron alloy that includes a bit of tungsten and chromium) (here, "steal" means "swipe" ... and STEEL is at the *back* of its answer, so it's a SWIPE RIGHT)
KNICK KNACKS (35A: Tchotchkes) ("nick" means "swipe"... SWIPE LEFT)
KEYSTONE KOP (44A: Incompetent figure of old slapstick) ("cop" means "swipe"... SWIPE RIGHT)

Word of the Day: HUSSAR (4D: Hungarian horseman) —

A hussar (/həˈzɑːr/ hə-ZAR, /hʊˈzɑːr/) (Polish: huzar, Hungarian: huszár, Serbian Latin: husar, Serbian Cyrillic: хусар) was a member of a class of light cavalry, originating in Central Europeduring the 15th and 16th centuries. The title and distinctive dress of these horsemen were subsequently widely adopted by light cavalry regiments in European armies in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.
A number of armored or ceremonial mounted units in modern armies retain the designation of hussars.

• • •

Well that was a chore to explain. And also a slight chore to figure out in the first place. Didn't take me long, but I did have to think about it, and when I figured it out, well, GROAN, for sure (43A: Response to a computer crash). I'm having trouble getting past the repetition of SWIPE, for starters. I get that in order for the theme to work at all (probably), you've got to repeat the word, but it's just such an ugly solution, somehow. Might've been nice to indicate that the revealers were app-related phrases, as I probably struggled more with the front end of -PERIGHT than I did anywhere else in the grid besides HUSSAR (which I confused with HESSIAN, and which I haven't seen in a puzzle since god knows when). The ostentatious app-iness of this whole puzzle (see also TIKTOK) gives it a very strong "Hello, fellow youths!" feel, as in "Hello, fellow youths! Did you see that KEYSTONE KOPs one-reeler at the Rialto last night!? ROFL, amirite!? Hey, who are your favorite EARPS? Mine's Virgil, duh! Do you like 'KOJAK?''Who loves ya, baby?' Ha ha Yeah, he's cool. Oh, hang on, BRB, gotta go TOT up the SODAS for our field trip to Six Flags. I mistotted last time and we DRANK 'em all before we even left the parking lot: epic FAIL! Hey, you guys wanna make an OPERA TIKTOK?! I mean RAP! RAP is what I listen to for sure. Anyway, think about it ..." Etc. This theme is just ... a lot. Extra. Trying real hard. I see the wordplay and the theme density and all of it, and I am sort of nodding at it appreciatively, but it wasn't really for me. Two of the answers get their homonyms from fanciful made-up words (Lyft, Kop). The fill, especially around where the revealers meet (i.e. the south), is really rough. ITSYITISIIIISPY!?!? Yeesh. Oh, wow, I just realized that this puzzle is 16 wide. It really can't follow any of the rules, can it? What a rebel... I can't believe this puzzle doesn't have a hit show on Nickelodeon already.

Five things:

39D: Kiss amorously (SNOG)— I get that they use this word a lot in Harry Potter, but it still needs some indicator that it's foreign slang, imho.
50D: Harry Potter's Quidditch position (SEEKER) — this puzzle has definitely read all the Harry Potter books, multiple times. Or, he's seen all the movies. Probably the latter.
28A: Volunteer for another tour (REUP)— this was the final answer on the first Sunday puzzle I ever successfully completed (in 1991), so even though it is semi-garbage fill, I can't bring myself to hate it the way it needs to be hated.
61A: Legislature V.I.P. (WHIP) — probably the hardest single answer for me, weirdly. It's down in that thicket where the revealers overlap and before I knew what the revealers were doing, it was rough, and even after I had the "W" from SWIPE and and the "P" from I SPY I still couldn't see what was going on. W--P ... my brain wanted only WIMP.

47A: ___ pony (POLO)— yes, very "relatable."

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Joe Deeney

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (not sure of exact solving time as I had to wrestle with rebus squares in my software)

THEME: PIECES OF EIGHT (53A: Pirate plunder ... or a hint to interpreting an appropriate number of squares in this puzzle) — eight "8" squares, I guess ... so it's "eight" phonetically (i.e. "ATE") in the Acrosses and two "O"s in the Downs ... I guess the numeral "8" represents two "O"s one on top of the other ... [sigh]

Theme answers:

UPLATE / GOOF UP
THE FOURTH ESTATE / "SCHOOL DAZE"
HATERS GONNA HATE / TOO SOON / SNOOPS
TAILGATE PARTY / TOO SOON
XRATED / WHIRLPOOLS
ON A DATE / FOOLS
CRATER / WHOOPI

Word of the Day: Chicago's EDEN'S Expressway (67A: Chicago's ___ Expressway) —

The William G. Edens Expressway (also known as the Edens Parkway and the Edens Superhighway) is the main major expressway north from the city of Chicago to Northbrook, Illinois. Only the short portion from the spur ramp to the expressway's end in Highland Park does not carry I-94. It was the first expressway in Chicago and was opened on December 20, 1951. It has three lanes in each direction. The original name of the expressway was the Edens Parkway, named after William G. Edens, a banker and early advocate for paved roads. He was a sponsor of Illinois' first highway bond issue in 1918. (wikipedia)

• • •

This was annoying to solve. Why do constructors keep trying to do Soooooo much? I don't mean mere ambition, I mean whistles and bells that just make things a mess. It's "8" in the grid but ATE in the Across and "OO" in the Downs *and* there are 8 theme squares and there's a "pirate" (?) phrase for a revealer?! People will ooh and aah at the "impressive feat of construction," but the solving experience was unpleasant. It was especially unpleasant if, like so many people, you didn't solve it on paper. For me, it was just a dumb "why is ATE crossing OO and really is that the only thing that's happening? and it's just going to *keep* happening!?!?"HATERS GONNA HATE is a fun phrase, and I enjoyed remembering that "SCHOOL DAZE" existed, but the rest of it, no thanks.

Found the ATE/OO thing very early with UPLATE / GOOF UP (two "up" phrases crossing, really? OMG no, SAT UP is right there too, with "UP" crossing the "UP" in GOOF UP— that's all truly horrid). And then it was just a slog, with PIECES OF EIGHT only kinda sorta bringing it all together. I guess the "PIECES" are the 8 squares? I had some trouble seeing PIECES OF EIGHT because I had MOOR instead of COVE at one point (54D: Spot to lay anchor). I had a *lot* of wrong answers. PARKS for POLLS (24A: They close at 9 p.m. in New York); MLS before XFL (59D: Sports org. with the New York Guardians and Seattle Dragons); Nation of ISLES instead of Nation of ISLAM (don't ask, man, I have no idea what my brain was doing there) (30D: Nation of ___). The worst error by far was SLOGS (and then PLODS) for PLOWS (49A: Goes (through) laboriously). What a gangly awkward clue on such a basic word. Because of my wrong answer(s), I couldn't see YIPE (43D: Cry of surprise) (it's YIPES, btw). I also just couldn't get to CLICK (47D: Hit it off), and I really really wasn't expecting a theme square down there, so CRATER and WHOOPI were rough. The rest of the grid wasn't much trouble. It also wasn't much fun.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Erik Agard and Anne Flinchbaugh

Relative difficulty: Easy to Easy-Medium (I solved on paper without a timer)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: SANTOS (35D: Brazilian soccer team that Pelé played for) —

Santos Futebol Clube (Brazilian Portuguese: [ˈsɐ̃tus futʃiˈbɔw ˈklubi]), commonly known simply as Santos, is a Brazilian sports club based in Vila Belmiro, a bairro in the city of Santos. It plays in the Paulistão, the State of São Paulo's premier state league, as well as the Brasileirão, the top tier of the Brazilian football league system.
The club was founded in 1912 by the initiative of three sports enthusiasts from Santos by Raimundo Marques, Mário Ferraz de Campos, and Argemiro de Souza Júnior as a response to the lack of representation the city had in football. Since then, Santos became one of Brazil's most successful clubs, becoming a symbol of Jogo Bonito (English: the Beautiful Game) in football culture, hence the motto "Técnica e Disciplina" (Technique and discipline). The most recognized Santista anthem is the "Leão do Mar" written by Mangeri Neto. This was largely thanks to the Peixe's golden generation of the 1960s which contained players such as Gilmar, Mauro Ramos, Mengálvio, Coutinho, Pepe and Pelé, named the "Athlete of the Century" by the International Olympic Committee, and widely regarded as the best and most accomplished footballer in the game's history. Os Santásticos, considered by some the best club team of all times, won a total of 24 titles during that decade including five consecutive Brasileirões, a feat that remains unequaled today. Os Santásticos won four competitions in 1962, thus completing a quadruple, comprising the Paulistão, the Brasileirão, the Copa Libertadores and the European/South American Cup. (wikipedia)

• • •

Well OK then, hi, hello there. This is the Friday crossword content I am looking for (and congrats to Anne Flinchbaugh on what appears to be her NYTXW debut). After my initial annoyance at being thrown a "?" clue at 1A: Caseload? (BOTTLES)— not welcoming! — rather than wrestle with it, I just jumped over to the NE corner, got SIDEBET immediately, and settled in for what turned out to be a great, if brief, ride. I just kept filling in the grid and nodding. Yes. Oh sure, I like that. Good one. Oh, CHEAT CODE, huh, wow. It kept on like that. So smooth. So smooth that the rough bits (for me) really stood out. The rough bits are (unsurprisingly) all proper nouns that were "rough" because I didn't know them. Too bad so sad. The only truly rough bit, where "rough" can be understood as "unlovely," was OVULAR, which ... how many damn ways do we need to say egg-shaped in this ridiculous language? Were OVATE and OVOID not enough!? I guess my complaint here is more with the English language than with the puzzle, which, as I say, was mostly gold. The truly impressive thing to me was that it felt poppin' fresh while not really having *that* many long answers. Only six answers go longer than eight letters, and only three go longer than nine. And yet man do they make good use of the 8+ stuff: BADMOUTH, EVIL GRINS, RUNNER'S HIGH, CHEAT CODE, LUNAR CRATER. If you can maximized the wow value of your longer answers, keep your shorter stuff clean, and write occasionally interesting clues, well, that's all there is to it! Easy! (Editor's voice: not easy)

Favorite moments today were actually cluing moments, which I could probably just call "clues," but we're a high-class outfit here at "Rex Parker" and we like to deal in professional-seeming argot when we can. I loved the clue on DRS (what are the odds of That?) (25A: Mount Sinai people: Abbr.). Mostly I'm glad I saw the clue only *after* I'd filled it in from crosses, because wow that would've thrown me. My brain would definitely have gone "Bible" and not "hospital," and then I'd've been in Stuck City until the crosses helped me out (I bypassed Stuck City today, accidentally, by just doing the crosses). The other hurray moment for me with the cluing came at 43A: A mare might be found in one—before I read that clue, I had L--AR in place, so my brain was already thinking LUNAR, but when I saw the clue, I had a great (because brief) moment of "'mare,' what the ...?" and then snap, yes, got it. From the Latin for "sea," mares (actually ... looks like the plural is "maria") are "large, dark, basaltic plains on the moon" that early astronomers mistook for seas (wikipedia). They cover about a sixth of the moon's surface. Anyway, love both the DRS and the LUNAR CRATER clues, though I have to admit it was nice in both cases to be able to admire them without having had to go through that icky period where you're baffled by them. This puzzle was 95%+ good feelings, which is honestly about 30% more than I actually require. Please study the non-flashy parts of the grid to see what "smooth fill" means. Not JOSHING. Do it. Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. I did not know who EGO Nwodim is because I don't watch "SNL" any more, but she's been on the show since 2018 (11D: Nwodim of "S.N.L."). I like the way Erik (here and in his the puzzles he edits for USA Today) helps me navigate the pop culture names I don't know by making sure crosses are superfair.

P.P.S. I could not process what the "in more ways than one" part of the PREGAME clue was getting at (16A: Time for warm-up shots, in more ways than one). I think the idea is that players take practice shots in PREGAME, and cameras take shots *of* the warm-up in their PREGAME shows? So, basketball shots and camera shots are the "more ways than one" ... if that's wrong, please don't tell me, because I'm honestly content with my explanation.

P.P.P.S. A young person just informed me that PREGAME means “drink before going to a game / party” so “shots” = alcohol. Sigh. Clever clue that I missed because of generational lingo difference. I hate binge-drinking, which literally kills the kids I teach. I don’t like xword clues that joke about alcoholism (wacky punny clues for SOT or DTS or DIPSO, say). This one isn’t in that category, but it has negative connotations for me solely because of my job. My problem, not yours.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Trenton Charlson

Relative difficulty: Easy (4:28)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: HILDA Doolittle (36A: Imagist poet Doolittle) —

Hilda Doolittle (September 10, 1886 – September 27, 1961) was an American poet, novelist, and memoirist, associated with the early 20th century avant-garde Imagist group of poets, including Ezra Pound and Richard Aldington. She published under the pen name H.D. (wikipedia)

• • •

So mad right now because I have absolutely heard of "H.D." but had no idea those initials stood for HILDA Doolittle. Really truly deceptive, to the point of being borderline inaccurate, to say that the poet was anything but "H.D." She published under the name "H.D." Gah! Can't decide if this is a knowing-too-much or knowing-too-little problem. Anyway, it stinks. Still, I can't complain about difficulty very much, since HILDA / CPA provided literally the only difficulty in this whole solve. I somehow knew / "knew"MCCAIN (1A: Senator who wrote "Faith of My Fathers"); it was the first thing that came to mind and I tested it and bingo bango! Five of the six crosses immediately checked out, and CZARINAS followed shortly thereafter. Hard to overestimate how important getting 1-Across is on any day, but today it felt *particularly* fortuitous. With "-ZIC-" in place, QUIZZICAL LOOKS was a gimme. Wrote in QUOTATION MARKS without ever even looking at the clue—that is the kind of solve I was having. I typo'd PAGE GOY for Prince Valiant's haircut, which was the only real mistake I made. I guess the puzzle thinks it's being cute with all the "Q"s... honestly, I don't qare. The grid seems fine, overall, but the puzzle itself was way way way too easy. HOP UP, that was weird. I wanted PEP UP, which would also have been weird. I've heard of someone's being "hopped up on goofballs," but HOP UP as a phrase meaning simply "energize," that's definitely out-of-the-language for me. But nothing else was.

I had CPU for CPA because ... just because. I didn't know why the clue was winking at me (29D: No. brain?). Like, was it flirting with me? Did it have something in its eye? I just didn't get it. The CPU is the computer's "brain," so I just went with that, but then it seemed very unlikely that an imagist poet would be named HINDU Doolittle (which is where that first name was headed), so I tore out that "U" and then the rightness of CPA finally asserted itself to me. I just read about ARSÈNE Lupin and Sherlock Holmes in Alan Moore / Kevin O'Neill's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (which I'm in the middle of), so that clue felt like it was made special for me (59A: "___ Lupin Versus Herlock Sholmes" (1910 story collection)). It's not that I knew all the answers, it's that the answers I got caused other answers to topple by giving me enough letters in the right places to make educated guesses. Felt like watching dominoes fall rather than pushing a boulder up a hill. Exhilarating, in a way, but also sad, because I feel like I barely saw this. Do NOMADsTRAIPSE? Really? Not a very I would've associated with them. BAH. Have a nice day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Sophia and David Maymudes

Relative difficulty: Easy to Easy-Medium (9:15)

THEME:"RESOLVED"— you "solve" the puzzle by adding "RE-" to the beginnings of words in familiar phrases, creating wacky phrases, which are clued wackily (i.e. "?"-style)

Theme answers:

REPRESS YOUR LUCK (27A: "Stop rolling sevens!"?) (are sevens "lucky"? Is this a craps thing?)
RELATE TO THE PARTY (45A: Build rapport like a presidential candidate?)
RESENT PACKING (70A: Hate getting ready to move?)
RESTOCKS AND BONDS (97A: Makes friends while working retail?)
RETURN THE TABLES (115A: Event planner's post-banquet task?)
RECOVER GIRL (16D: Young woman to call when your data gets deleted?)
RECESS POOLS (69D: Places to swim during school?)

Word of the Day: MONGO (106D: Home planet of Ming the Merciless) —

a monetary subunit of the tugrik (merriam-webster.com) .... or ....

Mongo is a fictional planet where the comic strip (and later movie serials) of Flash Gordon takes place. Mongo was created by the comics artist Alex Raymond in 1934, with the assistance of Raymond's ghostwriter Don Moore. Mongo is depicted as being ruled by a usurper named Ming the Merciless, who is shown as ruling Mongo in a harsh and oppressive manner.
The planet is depicted as being inhabited by different cultures, and having a varying ecosystem.The technology of these cultures varies from groups at a Stone Age level, to highly technologically advanced peoples. At the beginning of the comic strip, almost all of these cultures are shown as being under the domination of the tyrant Ming. In all the versions of the Flash Gordon story, Flash Gordon is shown as unifying the peoples of Mongo against Ming, and eventually removes him from power. Later stories often depict Mongo under the rule of its rightful leader, Prince Barin. (wikipedia)

• • •

The one positive thing I can say about this puzzle is that 1-Across (DESPAIR) is apt. Nice touch. Tells you exactly what you will feel about 1/3 of the way through the puzzle when you realize that this is it, it's not getting any better, you're just gonna be putting RE- onto the front of words ad nauseam. And the fill, that also isn't going to improve. It's just gonna tread water, struggling to keep its head above Adequate, for the remainder of the solve (which, thank merciful god, was not that long). ORME, ONYOU, TIRO, UIE, NNE TIRO INLA ANI ORIEL ISE IHAVEENCARTAATPAR! My investment in this puzzle, my care, my serious attention, they all checked out completely at -ONYM (15D: Ending with pseud- or syn-). ALOAF!? ORNITH.!!!!! hahahaha wow, wow. And the single ARREAR returns to haunt the grid once again ... stunning. What is happening today? HOY VEY!

I was forewarned that this would be a very easy puzzle, so of course I didn't come anywhere close to my record time (I have never ever done well on a puzzle I've been told by others is easy, which is why I stay the hell off of social media before I've solved and why you should never ever (please!) send me comments or questions about the puzzle until after I have posted my write-up. I know sometimes you are eager to get your feelings out, but ... courtesy! Still, though, this was pretty much as advertised, i.e. easy. UGLI, but easy. Here are the places I stumbled:

Stumbles:

1D: Pullers of Artiemis's chariot (DEER)— really should've gotten this one straight off, but did the sometimes reasonable but today dumb thing of putting "S" at the end of the answer and waiting to see what would happen. My brain had that chariot being pulled by HENS at one point.
53A: Dance craze of the early 2010s (DOUGIE)— sigh, bygone fads. Great! I vaguely remember the phrase "teach me how to DOUGIE!" and that is all I remember.
47D: Brexit exiter (THE U.K.) — ugh, THEUK. Especially ugly when the clue doesn't even bother to signal the abbr. part. Also, the cluing is awkward as heck, as it sounds like the answer should be "one who exits Brexit," not "the party whose exit is signified by the portmanteau 'Brexit'." Awk, I say!
84D: Study of birds: Abbr. (ORNITH.) — I just could not have foreseen a six-letter (!) abbr. I mean, of course ornithology is the study of birds, but ORNITH.!? It's just ... who expects ORNITH.!? (an entry not seen in sixteen years, and hopefully not seen for at least another sixteen)
99D: Rehearsals (DRY RUNS) — I kept wanting it to be TRYOUTS. Over and over. The fact that this answer ran through the very wince-y NNE SOL UIE NINO section didn't help matters

RECAP AND GOWN! REBOUND FOR GLORY! REFORM-FITTING! These aren't hard to come up with, and the funniness ceiling on the whole concept is pretty low. Sorry the news isn't better.

On the Clipboard this week ...

It's been a very Berry week, for sure. First of all, Patrick Berry's New Yorker puzzle this week was humblingly smooth and gorgeous. The kind of thing where even as you're solving, you're just shaking your head, marveling at the fact that any one human can be this good at anything. I wish more constructors would study his work and aspire to his level of craft. I mean, you're gonna fall short, but falling short of Patrick Berry can still leave you in a pretty wonderful place. See his puzzle here.
The other Berry thing that happened this week was his release of "Sweet 16," a puzzle suite (!) consisting of 16 smallish variety puzzles, each one leading to its own meta-answer, and then the whole set leading to some final meta-answer. I just started in on these and they're delightful. Well worth your $10. Buy "Sweet 16"here, for yourself, for a loved one, for America.
My favorite puzzle of the week was probably Amy Goldstein and Joanne Sullivan's WSJ crossword from Tuesday 2/18—and it's a theme type that I normally really don't care for. The puzzle was called "Behind the Scenes," and the theme answers were all two-word (or compound) phrases, where both words (or word parts) could also follow the word "PLAY" in familiar words/phrases. MONEYMAKER, DATEBOOK, etc. No great shakes, really. But the grid! It was so smooth and had such vibrant fill, stuff like HOTCOMB and PHOTOBOMB and FRONT TEETH and POOH CORNER (!!). I just *enjoyed* solving it. This puzzle was proof that you don't have to have a startlingly original theme concept to make a truly *enjoyable* puzzle. It's also proof that the WSJ should publish way way way more women. They're sitting at 6% for 2020 so far. That is embarrassing. The very existence of this puzzle proves that there are women constructors who can make puzzles not just as good, but better than the WSJ average. So why the incessant mediocre old white guy parade!? It's gotta stop, or at least ... abate. Please.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor:Jacob Stulberg

Relative difficulty:Medium-Challenging

THEME:RAISING THE FLAG (15D: Activity depicted in a famous 2/23/1945 photograph ... and in three of this puzzle's answers) — Theme answers, which are all downs, feature the letters "FLAG" rising vertically from bottom to top.

Theme answers:

DINING AL FRESCO (4D: Having a meal under the stars, e.g.)
KING ALFRED (6D: Ninth-century English monarch known as "the Great")
LEGAL FORCE (28D: What a law hasn't been repealed still has)

Word of the Day: SUET (35D: Tallow source)

/ˈso͞oət/
noun
the hard white fat on the kidneys and loins of cattle, sheep, and other animals, used to make foods including puddings, pastry, and mincemeat.

• • •

Hi everyone! Jordan Siff here. I'm a brand strategist by day, but longtime fan of Rex's blog, so here I am to give you my take on today's puzzle. I live in NYC, so if you're reading this on the subway - perhaps refreshing Safari as you glide into a station that has cell service - you are my people!

So, I told myself that I didn't want to come across too jaded or critical in my debut post, but my job is to be honest here - this one missed the mark for me. I found it to be pretty tough for a Monday, more Tuesday-ish in difficulty, which may be due to the theme forcing some fairly obscure and long down answers. I see what RAISING THE FLAG was going for, but it didn't pan out too well as a theme because there wasn't anything unique about how it interacted with each answer. It was more or less "here are three answers that all have GALF somewhere in them." I might not be the biggest history buff, but I've never heard of KING ALFRED, and a somewhat random king from ninth century England feels a bit esoteric for Monday fare. LEGAL FORCE wasn't too exciting either. DININGAL FRESCO was a nice touch, but that's 1 out of 3. Perhaps the revealer helped some people solve the other themers once they knew that "GALF" would show up, but my experience was just finishing the puzzle and then scratching my head over the theme after the fact.

Outside the theme, this puzzle does have a few redeeming qualities. The clue for BARISTAS was clever - and I'll definitely need a nice, strong cup when I get back to my "daily grind" today. The cross between IOTA and ATOM, both clued as "Tiny bit," was cute. I liked the clue for CARVE, but for some reason had BASTE in there first? There wasn't too much hardcore crosswordese (looking at you, APSES), but some less common short fill that may have been a bit much for a Monday (e.g. SHOD AMAIN LOCI ROIL SUET).

Bullets:

HINGE (21A: What a door swings on)— Call me a millennial, but referencing the dating app could have been a more modern or fun cluing on this one.
MONGREL (25A: Opposite of a purebred) — This word definitely has a "playground insult" vibe, to me. I can't imagine someone matter-of-factly referring to their dog as a "mongrel."
AGORA (38A: Ancient Greek meeting place) — For some reason, this is singed into my head as a vocab word from my 6th grade Ancient History class. Shoutout Mrs. Kolodney!
AS IF (38D: "Yeah, I'm real sure!") — I'm trying to imagine someone sarcastically saying "Yeah, I'm real sure!" like that's a phrase that would be uttered out of a human mouth. AS IF!
GAMY (66A: Like venison that's been sitting awhile) — I thought that venison was gamy in and of itself. If it's been sitting for awhile, that just sounds...rancid!?

Signed, Jordan Siff, New to CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Hello, everyone! It's Clare — back for the last Tuesday in February. I swear this month has flown by, and I have no idea where the time went. Here in D.C., it's already starting to feel like spring because the weather has been so warm lately. Though, when I tell my family this, they like to remind me that it's already in the 70s out in California. Anyway, I hope you all have had a great month of February and enjoy the extra day in this leap year! Now on to the puzzle...

Constructor: Peter Gordon

Relative difficulty:Medium

THEME: STATE MOTTO(69A and 70A: What the first word of each long Across answer is vis-a-vis the bracketed place in its clue)

Theme answers:

FRIENDSHIP GAMES (21A: International competition for countries that boycotted the 1984 Summer Olympics [Texas])
HOPE DIAMOND (31A: 45 1/2-carat gem at the National Museum of Natural History [New Hampshire])
FORWARD PASS (43A: QB's downfield throw [Wisconsin])
INDUSTRY LEADERS (57A: Companies that have big market shares [Utah])

Word of the Day:GILAS (23D: Large lizard of the southwest)—

The Gila monster (HEE-lə) is a species of venomous lizard native to the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexican state of Sonora. A heavy, typically slow-moving lizard, up to 2 feet long, the Gila monster is the only venomous lizard native to the United States and one of only two known species of venomous lizards in North America. Although the Gila monster is venomous, its sluggish nature means it represents little threat to humans. However, it has acquired a fearsome reputation, and is sometimes killed despite being protected by state law in Arizona. In 2019, the state of Utah made the Gila monster its official state reptile, despite the very small range of the Gila monster in the state. (Wiki)

• • •

Clue: What I said when I got to the end of the puzzle and realized the theme [California] --> Answer: "Eureka!"

Dumb joke aside, I mostly didn't find much PEP (33A: Liveliness) in the puzzle. I also felt like the theme was an afterthought to my solve — I was mainly confused by the brackets as I did the crossword and only at the very end did I understand why there were there. While I was solving, I kept trying to think how FORWARD PASS might relate to Wisconsin or wondering what relation the HOPE DIAMOND could have to New Hampshire. I guess, on the plus side of all this, I learned some state mottos? ('Cause that's definitely going to help me in the future...)

As I'm trying to write about the puzzle, I'm realizing that not much of the puzzle is sticking with me, as I didn't find really any of the clues to be particularly clever or fun. A lot of the answers seemed like they could be clued in fresher ways, like HYDRA (maybe something with Marvel); LEVY (Schitt's Creek, anyone); ERROR (something maybe baseball-related — like, say, the Astros' past few seasons); etc... I just get tired of seeing the same answer clued in almost the same way every time. Like in this puzzle, NARC at 61A is in essentially the exact same place as it was for Monday's puzzle (at 58A). This time it was clued as "drug cop." Yesterday, the clue was "antidrug agent, informally." If I never saw another AIDED; ORB; NARC; or APNEA in a puzzle, I would be a happy camper.

I did mostly enjoy the downs, particularly LAVA LAMP, TRIPOLI, AW SHUCKS, and GILAS. Though, from my deep dive into researching these Gila Monsters, I'm now a bit terrified of them.

Misc.:

I know LAVA LAMPS were mainly popular in the '60s-'70s, but they definitely had a resurgence sometime in the late '90s/early 2000s. Growing up, I was definitely obsessed with having one.
22D definitely had the potential to be a stumper, but, luckily, I'd read the book, "Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH" as part of a sixth grade project that involved making it into a picture book for little kids. The book was fine, but it's stuck with me because of how much I managed to procrastinate on the assignment. I remember my mom had to stay up very late finishing this assignment with me. I'd love to say it taught me a lesson, but I definitely still put the 'pro' in 'procrastination."
All I can think of when I see HEATS (63A: Preliminary races) is how many stupid heats there were in track for the 100m and 200m in high school. Seriously, it seemed like everyone competed in these two events, and they took absolutely forever to get through. It made trying to figure out when to warm up for the mile or 2-mile near impossible.
If someone wants to watch a movie about a "Glasgow Gal" (11A), I recommend watching "Wild Rose." She's a LASS but also loves to sing country music and wants to make it to Nashville. I saw it and loved it. And everyone needs to at least hear her sing this song that should've been nominated for (and probably won) an Oscar:

Signed, Clare Carroll, "ad astra per aspera" [Kansas]

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Domination in slang / THU 2-6-20 / Fragrance since 1932 / Title partner of Hobbs in hit 2019 film / In Old Mexico In Old Santa Fe / Target for holistic healing / Portmanteau fruit / Port SSE of Suez Canal / Travel for bigheaded person

Seminal William S. Burrows novel 1959 / FRI 2-7-19 / Intensifying suffix in modern slang / Fictional Ethiopian princess / Certain PR in two different senses / Role for Nichelle Nichols Zoe Saldana

Office-sharing system in modern lingo / SAT 2-8-20 / Easy kill in Fortnite say / They get big bucks from Bucks

Bug-eyed primates / SUN 2-9-20 / New York city where Mark Twain was married buried / Energy-efficient Navajo structure / Cruise line that owned the Lusitania

Drudgery in old usage / MON 2-10-20 / Big name in athletic shoes / Mississippi port city with Air Force Base

Comeuppance for package thief / TUE 2-11-20 / Ballet position on tiptoe / Actress Merrill of "BUtterfield 8"

Optimistic maxim from Virgil / WED 2-12-20 / Lorena who was #1 female golfer for 158 consecutive weeks / parents grandparents in teen lingo / Overly optimistic 1910's appellation / Team sharing arena with Flyers informally

noun

Onetime truth in engineering sloganeer / THU 2-13-20 / Relative of jaguarundi / Reference that arranges words by concept rather than alphabetically / Noted painter of scenes in Napoleonic wars / Super Mario bros character with mushroom head

Successor language to Common Brittonic / FRI 2-14-20 / Automotive sponsor of Wagon Train in 1950s / Rebus symbol for everything / Grammy-winning metal band with tasty-sounding name

Bob of old children's TV / SAT 2-15-20 / Chanel fragrance with French name / Epoch when modern mammals arose / Benchmark test for British students / Third largest city of Ottoman Empire

Longtime Eagles QB Donovan / SUN 2-16-20 / Whom Harry Potter frees from serving Draco Malfoy's family / Area the Chinese call Xizang / Fictional creature made from slime / Millennial informally / Facetious response to verbal jab / Beginner in modern lingo

Former competitor of Southwest / MON 2-17-20 / Argentine partner dances / Prestigious Atlanta university

Village of the Prancing Pony inn in Lord of the Rings / TUE 2-18-20 / 1930s boxing champ Max / Storms are brewin in her eyes in a 1986 #1 hit

Hungarian horseman / WED 2-19-20 / Reject romantically show interest romantically / Popular game that needs no equipment / Popular video-sharing service / Iron alloy that includes bit of tungsten chromium

Pirate plunder / THU 2-20-20 / Sweet and healing medicine of troubles per Horace / Oscar-nominated actor with nearly synonymous first and last names / Where the Ko'olau range is located

Palace in Hindi / FRI 2-21-20 / Celebrity with namesake cereal in '80s / Mare might be found in one / Helpful word in solving cryptograms

Imagist poet Doolittle / SAT 2-22-20 / Unstable subatomic particle / Creature with eyespots on its wings

Dance craze of early 2010s / SUN 2-23-20 / Color akin to cyan / Pullers of Artemis's chariot / Locke who was called father of Harlem renaissance / Home planet of ming merciless / Southeast Asian ethnic group /

Twisted person / MON 2-24-20 / Do the honors with the turkey / Jules who wrote "Journey to the Center of the Earth" / Flurry

Liveliness / TUES 2-25-20 / Place for tugboats / Japanese cartoon style / Rave's partner