Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle

Constructor: Aimee Lucido

Relative difficulty: Challenging (8:48 on an oversized 16-wide grid)

THEME: MIND THE GAP (39A: Underground warning ... or a warning about four squares in this grid)— four squares have "GAP" in them going Across, but represent an actual gap (i.e. an empty space) going Down:

Theme answers:

THE BI(G AP)PLE (25A: New York City) / "REPO [gap] MAN"(5D: Car tower)
TO(GA P)ARTY (23A: Classic fraternity bash) / BAD [gap] IDEA (10D: "Uh-oh! Don't do that!")
SIN(GAP)OREAN (57A: Native of the Lion City) / GYM [gap] SHOE (41D: Bit of workout gear)
YO(GA P)ANTS (60A: Activewear akin to leggings) / ICE [gap] AGE (44D: Long cold spell)

Word of the Day: Rob ESTES (37A: "Melrose Place" actor Rob) —

Robert Estes (born July 22, 1963) is an American actor. He is known for his roles as Harry Wilsonon the teen drama series 90210, as Sgt. Chris Lorenzo on the crime drama series Silk Stalkings, and as Kyle McBride on the primetime soap opera Melrose Place. (wikipedia)

• • •

I guess the NYT has decided that if you can't beat The New Yorker (the superior crossword at the moment), then just join The New Yorker ... by publishing The New Yorker's regular contributors. Yesterday, Erik Agard. Today, Aimee Lucido. Fine by me. The New Yorker constructor team is ridiculously good. This puzzle played *so* hard for me, and only partly because of the theme. I did kind of fake fall asleep there for a bit, thinking I'd solve in the morning, but instead I got up to solve now (the nighttime), so mayyyybe I'm a little groggy, but I think the clues were just hard, or hard for me to grasp, anyway, I had virtually nothing on my first pass through the entire top half. I think I had, let's see ... EARN, TIE and TOIL, IRE, OPA (wrong), and CLE. That is absolutely it. Finally went SPEAR ESCS (oof, one of the rare ugly bits) CLARITY SPF and got some traction, but even then—blanked on Channing FRYE (73A: Channing with a 14-year N.B.A. career (2005-19), had SLIT at 67A: Cut (SKIP) ... and couldn't get out of that corner. And so the struggle continued...

Eventually stumbled into the center and got the revealer Easy (mayyyybe shoulda found the revealer earlier: note to self!), and so realized that there would be GAPs ... then after getting SNEAKER, figured out one of the GAPs had to be in GYM [space] SHOE, and it was around there that I got SIN(GAP)OREAN, and the full meaning of the theme became clear. But even then, finding those gaps, and just getting all the regular fill, proved slow-going. Everywhere I turned, I just shrugged. Forgot that "Melrose Place" actor ESTES. No idea re: ROSIE the picture book engineer (5A: "___ Revere, Engineer" (best-selling picture book)). Proper nouns are nice when you know them, but brutal when you don't. I don't know how PEES factor into sound recording copyright info or even what the "P" might stand for (31D: Sound recording copyright symbols) (short answer: phonogram). Not expecting SIMP, which feels pejorative, even if it's not, exactly (I briefly thought it was gonna be GIMP, which, yikes) (61D: Fool). I had AIR for ACT (52D: Pretense) and an IMAC Pro, is that a thing? (30A: ___ Pro (IPAD)). [Alternative to ChapStick]??? No clue (EOS). Wanted to SHIR (?) my eggs (10A: Mix, as eggs (BEAT)). TADAS was rough. Had to navigate the horrid EVADE/ELUDE dilemma (64A: Get around). It was a struggle. And extra-wide, so a slightly longer struggle than a normally sized 15x15 might've been. I found some of the fill not great, and it was very much Not on my wavelength in many parts, but the theme is fantastic, and really nicely executed. A very nice puzzle that I wish I'd had a smoother / more pleasant time with.

Helpful proper noun gimmes: MAYA, REGAN, CLE, OSSA, ROO

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Emily Carroll

Relative difficulty: Easy (4:24)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: SITUATIONSHIP (32A: Romantic gray area) —

A situationship is essentially a relationship that hasn't been defined. So anything that precedes the DTR (define the relationship) conversation but follows the initial first few dates (Women's Health)

• • •

Solid B PLUS, though the clue on B PLUS is terrible—*any* grade that isn't "A" can be a [Summa cum laude spoiler] and also yuck to the whole aspirational quality of that clue. Nobody cares if you're summa. No one will remember but you and your mom. Stop. B PLUS is a good grade. Yeesh. Anyway, this puzzle was a B PLUS, as I was saying. It was also super duper easy. I fat-fingered my way across the keyboard, typoing nonstop, and still ended up just 12 seconds shy of my fastest Friday time in two years. If only I had ever (even once) heard of SITUATIONSHIP, which is one of those words ... ugh, look, I don't use Urban Dictionary, on principle, and without Urban Dictionary, there's nowhere to go for a formal definition of this term, which I guess is some millennial thing like "adulting" or whatever. Not sure why it needed a name, since being involved without formally being involved has been a thing since forever, but sure, wacky sad new words, knock yourselves out. I turn 50 next week, and I am really feeling my "kids these days!" energy right now. I've also been married for a long time, so it's not that shocking that relationship neologisms would've missed me. My favorite part about solving that answer was getting SITUATION- and thinking "... wait, is this the SITUATION ROOM ... is the SITUATION ROOM the new FRIEND ZONE ... or, like, a hotter FRIEND ZONE but still awkward ... and why would you name it after a Wolf Blitzer show!?!?" So please, youths of today, instead of "we're in a SITUATIONSHIP," say "we're ... in the SITUATION ROOM!" And then say "dum dum DUM!" and kind of tilt your head a little—a little news anchor flourish. Do it. You'll like it.

Some very bad clues today. 27D: Some of them are described as red and yellow, but not orange (SEAS), ugh, no, so messed up. "Some of them"??? No, precisely one of them is red and precisely one of them is yellow and actually it's captial-R Red and capital-Y Yellow. Some of them, yeesh. Sometimes you have to back off your cutesy clue 'cause the phrasing just doesn't work. Also, "gray area" seems like a really bad way to describe SITUATIONSHIP. A specific, named thing is almost by definition not a "gray area." You'd never refer to any relationship you were in as an "area." Tin. Ear. Don't like that 9D was PATÉS instead of PATES. Avoid diacritical marks if possible, unless you can make them work in the crosses—let that be your guiding philosophy. Enter into a SITUATIONSHIP with diacritical marks, if you will (I have no idea what I mean here). Let's see, what else? There were exactly four places I got slowed down today—trying to parse USE CARE (15A: Be cautious); figuring out tail end of SITUATIONSHIP; seeing SURER, for some reason (44D: Having fewer reservations); and getting the last part of GOOFUS—I had GOOBER (38D: Stupid person, in slang). Only things I really didn't like today, fill-wise, were LEOI and DUIS. Long answers are solid, shorts are largely inoffensive, so ... B PLUS. Sorry about your summa, but you should still hold your head high, little puzzle.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Trenton Charlson

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (untimed, but definitely easier than it looked like it was going to be, with those horrible open 7x7 corners...)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: SHARIFS (32D: Muslim magistrates) —

: a descendant of the prophet Muhammad through his daughter Fatimabroadly : one of noble ancestry or political preeminence in predominantly Islamic countries (merriam-webster)

• • •

Took one look at the grid and new it wasn't going to be a great experience. Can't say how grim I find these quadranted themelesses. I don't see the appeal. You get these giant open corners from which no (or little) good can come. At best, your 7x7 corner is going to be Just OK. And I mean *at best*. I have to idea what the appeal of filling such giant holes is besides a certain kind of technical showing off (which isn't very show-offy anymore, what with computer-aided construction). Anyway, sure enough, this topped out at OK, with lots of much lower moments. Nothing good can come of a puzzle (themeless or otherwise) that has only two (2) (TWO!) answers more than 7 letters long. And then the first of those is dull, and the second, which wants to be wacky, has this trip-over-your-laces clue that kind of ruins everything: "after" is in the clue, so ENSUES feels awkwardly redundant. The NYT is a pro at taking a perfectly good colloquial phrase and then hanging the ungainliest clue on it. Here's what I enjoyed seeing: OUTKAST. Maybe AQUAMAN, a little. Not that most of the fill is bad—it's fine, by and large. Just dull and lackluster and not what I solve Saturdays for. Higher word count, more sparkle, pleeeeeease!

Little annoyances abound today. WIT'S END looks weird as a stand-alone. APELIKE is ... ugh. I mean, APE is a synonym of "oaf" and "-like" is a synonym of "-ish," so, sure, that's a safe clue. But it's not a good clue, and it certainly doesn't make the term more attractive. I'd like to stand up for actual apes, who seem nothing like oafs, frankly. Stop hanging guys' bad behavior on apes, man. GOODY, oof. I had GOOD- and still didn't get it. You only get to "perk" via the phrase "GOODY bag," which I think are "perks" of certain kinds of parties. Maybe children's parties? Cookies and candies are goodies. I just don't think "perk" gets at it. "Something that is particularly attractive, pleasurable, good or desirable," says M-W. "Perks" are bonuses. Anyway, dislike. SILENT W is not a thing in my book. Stop trying to find occasions to put any and every letter of the alphabet at the end of SILENT _. I'll give you E for sure—a crucial concept. Sure, other letters can be silent, but they aren't stand-alone concepts. SILENT W!? Remember learning about SILENT W in third grade? No, you do not. :(

Do pros usually MAKE PAR? (11D: What pros usually do) Filled that one in with a grimace. I guess [Straightaway] is being used as a noun in the BEELINE clue? Again, awkward. A straightaway is a straight stretch of road or track. BEELINE is straight, yes, but entirely metaphorical. And since I stood up for apes earlier, allow me to stand up for bees and say, since when do they fly straight??? Have. You. Seen. Actual. Bees? The inaptness of the metaphor is not the puzzle's fault, obviously. Still... and speaking of bees, SACS, yuck, is that an anatomical clue? (32A: Pollen repositories). SAC has a "moist"-like quality for me, in that I find the word semi-repulsive. I wanted something more bee-ish than mere SACS. I have "F.U." written next to the clue for TUE (39D: Calendar abbr.) because I got the "T," which left me with a TUE / THU dilemma, and since the clue is the exact opposite of "vivid" or "lively" or "specific," I just had to wait. Vagueness does add difficulty, but it does not add color. ESSENES running along the bottom of the grid is pure crutch. Expect to see a lot of E S and N in harder-to-fill corners, lots of NESS's and -EST suffixes and plurals and what not. LOTS, I say. Why would you exhume the director of "Birth of a Nation" just to appear in a clue for SEXES!?!? Bizarre. I enjoyed remembering "Ferris Bueller," but that is a pretty niche clue for SLOANE (43D: She accompanied Ferris on his day off). I got it because that movie is in my cultural sweet spot. Might I suggest SLOANE Stephens for something a little more contemporary? She won the 2017 US Open, so she's definitely worthy.

If you don't give me anything fun to distract me, then I tend to chew on all the unpleasant stuff. Hence today's review. Oh, I like FAD DIETS too (36A: Fruitarianism and others). I forgot to mention that. That's good fill. The rest of the grid was subpar, which is another one of those inapt metaphors, since being below par is *good* in golf, which is the only context in which anyone uses "par." But if you just take "par" to mean "standard," then, yeah, being substandard is bad. If you'd like to stop my meandering linguistic disquisitions, kindly give me more material to play with next time, puzzle!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Frank Longo

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (11:29)

THEME:"Open Wide!" — it's just a wide open grid ... totally themeless ... :/

Word of the Day:"SEVEN YEARS IN TIBET" (60A: Hit 1997 film condemned by the Chinese government) —

Seven Years in Tibet is a 1997 American biographical war drama film based on the 1952 book of the same name written by Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer on his experiences in Tibetbetween 1944 and 1951 during World War II, the interim period, and the Chinese People's Liberation Army's invasion of Tibet in 1950. Directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud and starring Brad Pitt and David Thewlis, the score was composed by John Williams and features cellist Yo-Yo Ma.
In the story, Austrians Heinrich Harrer (Pitt) and Peter Aufschnaiter (Thewlis) are mountaineering in British India in an area that is now Gilgit-Baltistan in Pakistan. When World War II begins in 1939, their German citizenship results in their imprisonment by the British in a POW camp in Dehradun in the Himalayan foothills, in the present-day Indian state of Uttarakhand. In 1944, Harrer and Aufschnaiter escape the prison, and cross the border into Tibet, traversing the treacherous high plateau. While in Tibet, after initially being ordered to return to India, they are welcomed at the holy city of Lhasa, and become absorbed into an unfamiliar way of life. Harrer is introduced to the 14th Dalai Lama, who is still a boy, and becomes one of his tutors. During their time together, Heinrich becomes a close friend to the young spiritual leader. Harrer and Aufschnaiter stay in the country until the Chinese military campaign in 1950. (wikipedia)

• • •

LOL "hit 1997 film." I mean ... "hit?" Yeah, it made over $120M at the box office, but $90+M of that was overseas, and honestly, when was the last time anyone, anywhere, referred to "SEVEN YEARS IN TIBET"? I didn't even remember it existed. Wow. I was like "SEVEN ... YEARS ... A SLA...AVE?" Anyway, this puzzle, what to say? I think themeless Sundays are dumb. Just a slog with no point. Who needs a *longer* Friday? I've never thought, after solving a Friday, "I'd like something like this, but just ... bigger." And what is this even supposed to be? Besides open? It's not Fri/Sat hard, for the most part. It's just Big. With lots of open space, just 'cause. Seriously, for no reason except to kind of show off, I guess. It's fine for what it is, but what it is is not really interesting. I actually kind of liked solving it at times, but IDLY, casually, in between moments of ruing the weaker fill, particularly the following (which I have scrawled in the margins of my printed-out puzzle): DUCA, AMATIVE, COALERS, TROYES, ETCHIN. It's actually pretty smooth, otherwise, but it all just feels so pointless. I get that Sundays are hard to do well, but ... you pay like $2250 for them (for vets like Frank, anyway), why don't you have enough good ones to go around? It makes no sense. I think Sundays are probably just kind of a bummer to make. If your theme isn't slamming, then it's gotta be dreary to make, and certainly dreary to solve. I'm not mad at this puzzle. I just think of it as a kind of non-entity. Is it real? Who can say? I solved it, so, probably. Maybe it will be memorable for its ontological indeterminateness, if nothing else.

Usually with corners like these, I can run the Downs and then see the Acrosses pretty clearly, but the shorter Downs were actually harder than normal today. Only had a few in place after my first pass at the NW corner, but thankfully those were enough for me to see DANIEL CRAIG at 1A: Bondsman, of late? After that, the grid wasn't that hard to navigate (if you can get the front ends of those longer answers, whooooosh!). Had similar issues with the bottom R and L corners, but nothing ever caused a real standstill. SEIZER next to TRIODE stalled me a little in the SE, and RUHR for SAAR gunked up my SE briefly (as did NICEST ... does Michelin give stars for niceness????). Also, what are "old DAYS"? (70D: Word after old or dog). I hear "good old days" or "olden days," but "old DAYS" kinda clunks for me. I enjoyed TOOK TO THE SLOPES for sure, but a lot of the other longer ones, while solid, were just ... technical terms. Real things, but about as exciting as, well, someone touting that they sell BRAND-NAME PRODUCTS. Doesn't exactly inspire excitement. Sounds like dull commercialese. USED VEHICLE, same. IONIC BONDS ... very real, but they don't exactly set your arm hairs on end. OMG what is a ROADSTEAD? (102A: Partly sheltered area near land in which vessels ride at anchor). LOL, seriously? It's for ... boats? And has nothing to do with ... a road? OK then. Nice knowing you, puzzle. Bye now.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Daniel Mauer

Relative difficulty: Medium (maybe slightly north of Medium) (3:16)

THEME: ACK ACK — Ack Ack (February 24, 1966 – November 7, 1990) was an American Thoroughbred Hall of Fameracehorse. (wikipedia)

Theme answers:

SNACK ATTACK (17A: Reason to raid the fridge)
BACK ON TRACK (29A: No longer astray)
CRACK IS WACK (45A: 1986 Keith Haring antidrug mural)
YACKETY YACK (60A: Gab) (is this really how it's spelled? Not "yakkity yak!"? The song spells it "Yakety Yak" ... not sure where this variant comes from)

Word of the Day: NASHUA (10D: New Hampshire's second-largest city) —

Nashua is a city in southern New Hampshire, United States. As of the 2010 census, Nashua had a population of 86,494, making it the second-largest city in the state and in northern New England after nearby Manchester. As of 2018 the population had risen to an estimated 89,246. Nashua is, along with Manchester, one of two seats of New Hampshire's most populous county, Hillsborough County.
Built around the now-departed textile industry, in recent decades it has been swept up in southern New Hampshire's economic expansion as part of the Boston region. Nashua was twice named "Best Place to Live in America" in annual surveys by Money magazine. It is the only city to get the No. 1 ranking on two occasions—in 1987 and 1998. (wikipedia)

• • •

Would've quit this about 10 seconds in if I weren't faux-contractually obligated to write about it. Whatever you think about the theme (and I'm pretty neutral toward it), the fill in this is atrocious. There is no reason a Monday puzzle that is relatively light on, or at least not jammed with, theme material should have fill this rough and yesteryear. Seriously, ONENO is one of those answers that makes me want to shut the computer and walk away, immediately. It was never good, and it's especially terrible now, when constructing software can help constructors find at least passable fill in these run-of-the-mill corners. There's literally no excuse for ONENO. I guarantee you that if you pull out the NW and W, even leaving DEALMEIN in place, you (yes you, probably) can get rid of ONENO and probably IDINA and INCAN and NOS in the bargain. Why stop there, though? Keep going. Get rid of RIAL and AGRA, the NEATO BIS, DYAN and her ALGAE, the ASIS KOI the hissing SSS MRI, ANI, WINED, all of it. Or most of it. The best thing in the grid was also the hardest thing for me to recall: CRACK IS WACK! You can dump the rest in the KOI pond. (a friend of mine tells me, per the "constructor's notes," that ONENO was put in *during the editing process*, which ... wow. Wow. I mean, if ONENO was edited *in* to this thing, I don't know which is up or down or left or right (and I don't even want to imagine what the grid looked like originally).

I forgot NASHUA existed, wow. I'm trying not to actually look at that corner because again, the fill is So bad (NES ATA!), but yeah, that slowed me down a bit. I know NASHUA exists only because I interviewed for a job w/ a school in NASHUA 20+ years ago. I have literally never been to New Hampshire. Ever. But then I've only been to Vermont once, and then only just a few years ago. And they're only a few hours from me. Weird. Anyway, NASHUA slowed me a tad. So did WINED (ugh) because of course I had WOOED, which is an infinitely better answer (42A: Romanced, in a way). Wrote in SSA instead of SSS (confusing my terrible and my Very terrible SS_ words). How in the world does this grid require cheater squares?!?!?! (black squares after GASP / before ASIS—they make grid easier to fill but don't add to the word count; such squares are usually only used if filling the grid cleanly is demanding, which ... why today?? Maybe I should be grateful that this thing isn't filled worse, but I'm not feeling that charitable right now, now that I've found out that this puzzle actually *was* edited and we *still* ended up with this swill. I dumbly wrote in SADAT when I had -ADAT at 57A: Tore into (HAD AT), without even looking at the clue. Bad assumption. I have a feeling this will play somewhat on the harder side for people, but not too hard. Gotta run. Cheers.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

Apparently "YACKETY YACK" is indeed something—a 1974 Australian film (thanks for the reference, Brian!). Oh, and also this:

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Constructor: Olivia Mitra Framke

Relative difficulty: Medium (for me; other people seem to be setting personal records, so i dunno)

THEME: TAROT CARD READER (63A: One examining the starts of 17-, 27- and 48-Across)— themers begin with three different tarot cards: THE TOWER, THE DEVIL, and THE SUN:

Theme answers:

THE TOWER OF BABEL (17A: It resulted in human language division, per Genesis)
THE DEVIL YOU KNOW (27A: It's better than what's not familiar, in a saying)
"THE SUN ALSO RISES" (48A: Classic American novel set in France and Spain)

Word of the Day: ENOS Slaughter (37A: Baseball Hall-of-Famer Slaughter) —

Enos Bradsher Slaughter (April 27, 1916 – August 12, 2002), nicknamed "Country", was an American Major League Baseball (MLB) right fielder. He played for 19-seasons on four major league teams from 1938–1942 and 1946–1959. He is noted primarily for his playing for the St. Louis Cardinals and is best known for scoring the winning run in Game Seven of the 1946 World Series. A ten time All-Star, he has been elected to both the National Baseball Hall of Fame and the St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame. (wikipedia)

• • •

If you are reading this, I am fifty. Well, at least fifty. It's possible you are reading this in the distant future, I suppose. Anyway, it's my birthday. Sadly, it's also a Tuesday, which is one of my less hopeful crossword days. Tuesdays are so often dismal that there's even slang for a bad easy puzzle: "it tuezzed!" I think my friend Ben coined this. Anyway, Tuesdays are notoriously iffy. Why they should be such a drop off from Mondays, average quality-wise, I don't know. I think they're in a kind of no man's land, difficulty-wise and theme type-wise, and so often things just go awry. It's like a dumping ground for easy puzzles that were maybe too awkward to be truly easy. Anyway, they clunk more than most other days of the week. Given my very low expectations, I thought today's offering was fine. The tarot card choices are totally arbitrary—there are 22 cards, and these are just the three that you can make good 15-letter themers out of, I guess. So little does the tarot deck mean to me, I actually sincerely wrote in ZENER as the first word in the revealer. ZENER cards are used to test ESP, if I remember correctly. The only time I encounter either TAROT or ZENER is in crosswords. Ooh, except I do own a Red Sonja tarot deck, which I haven't opened. It just sits on a shelf here in my office next to my Saul Goodman action figure, a plush pig, an N*SYNC-themed die cast toy truck (Lance!) and a Duran Duran cassette. It's quite a shelf, to be honest.

Where was I? The theme! Arbitrary choices of cards, and honestly I just have to trust the constructor that those are indeed tarot cards, 'cause what do I know? But they're all 15s, which is nifty, and the theme phrases themselves, just taken on their own, are very good. Lively. There's some cringey fill here and there (for the second day in a row I wanted to quit in the NW, almost as soon as I'd started—ASLOW is rrrrough), and the grid is glutted w/ 3s 4s and 5s, but a handful of 8-letter Downs do sneak in there. So overall I'd call this a Satisfactory Tuesday effort.

Five things:

2D: Adolph ___, creator of the slogan "All the News That's Fit to Print" (OCHS)— forgot this. Went with OTIS. The elevator guy. Terrible. Not as auspicious way to begin age 50.
12D: ___ out a living (barely gets by) (EKES) — eeks. I can (barely) take EKE, but other variations / tenses are a drag, if only because of the ugly clues they entail.
11D: Bum (HOBO)— yeesh, easy on the "bum" stuff. In fact, here, read this: "Unlike a "tramp", who works only when forced to, and a "bum", who does not work at all, a "hobo" is a travelling worker" (wikipedia)
42A: Duke of ___, title for Prince Andrew (YORK)— yes ... yes ... because what everyone wants to see in their light-hearted Tuesday crossword is a gruesome Jeffrey Epstein associate. What a delightful and timely way to clue YORK. (My kingdom for a conscientious or even half-awake editor!)

64D: First of three? (TEE)— because "t" is the first letter ... of the word "three."

Thanks for listening! Hope your lead-up to Thanksgiving is going swimmingly. Ciao!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Hi, everyone! It's Clare. I'm coming to ya a day later than usual because it was Rex's birthday yesterday. (Happy birthday, Rex!) And, to all of you: Happy almost Turkey Day! I know I'm planning on making lots and lots of pies and bread rolls and mashed potatoes. (Carbs for the win.) Studying for finals can wait a few days, right? Anywho, doing a write-up on a Wednesday is gonna be a bit different for me, but here it goes!

Constructors:Jeff Chen and Matthew Sewell

Relative difficulty:Pretty challenging for a Wednesday

THEME: GROWTH POTENTIAL (55A: Ability of a company to expand ... or a hint to this puzzle's theme) and POT (65A: Herb garden vessel ... as depicted four times by black squares in this puzzle) — Black squares in the puzzle represent pots that have circled letters sitting in them that spell out "seed," which have the potential to grow into herbs that are shown in the shaded squares.

Theme answers:

PECCADILLOES (2D: Minor indiscretions)
MESSAGE BOARD (10D: Where trolls may lurk)
ARCHIVE SITE (23D: Where records of old web pages can be accessed)
IM IN THE ZONE (24D: Declaration from someone on a hot streak)

Word of the Day: Lenya LOTTE(17A: Singer/actress Lenya)

Lotte Lenya (18 October 1898 – 27 November 1981) was an Austrian-American singer, diseuse, and actress, long based in the United States. In the German-speaking and classical music world, she is best remembered for her performances of the songs of her first husband, Kurt Weill. In English-language cinema, she was nominated for an Academy Award for her role as a jaded aristocrat in The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1961). She also played the murderous and sadistic Rosa Klebb in the James Bond movie From Russia with Love (1963). (Wiki)

• • •

I wish I had nice things to say for my first time writing for a Wednesday, but... I don't... I generally like when constructors try to be creative with the theme and the structure, but I felt like this theme just didn't work. There was so much going on with the seeds — well, "seed," but that's a different issue — and growth potential and the pots and the structure that I felt it got too chaotic. Trying to figure out how to write the above description for the theme was legitimately the hardest part of this write-up and the hardest time I've ever had describing a theme. Overall, my biggest gripe was that the picture in the grid as the theme created some ugly fill. Sure, there were some nice, long downs in the puzzle, but the black pots or whatever they were created a lot of ugly three-letter fill, especially in the bottom of the puzzle. It's like the constructors tried to throw every single possible three-letter crossword-y word into the mix. (See: GAP; RHO; OAT; AHA; POT; IMP; ABE; LAW; MBA; PEW).

I also feel like there should be some sort of dictionary for how to consistently spell words in crosswords. It seems like there should be, oh, I don't know, an editor or something whose job it is to create a generic style. Like, I definitely think that NAN (25A: Tandoori bread) should be spelled "naan" every time. When I Google "nan brea," it even suggests I spell it like "naan" instead and only gives me results to spell it that way. Also, I think that UPSY daisy (18A) is much more commonly spelled like "oopsy daisy" or "oopsie daisy." Mostly, I'd really just love some consistency.

Misc.:

In my opinion, VAN GOGH is the best artist ever. Side note: I highly recommend watching the episode of "Doctor Who" about Van Gogh ("Vincent and the Doctor"). You will cry in the final scene (where Van Gogh gets to travel to present day to see the impact he's had).

I enjoyed the little "legal" bits of the puzzle with PLEA at 15A and LAW at 61D.
FIAT (53A: Diktat) is something other than a car? Who knew?

With that, I hope everyone has a happy Thanksgiving!

Signed, Clare Carroll, an excited Thanksgiving baker

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Constructor: Timothy Polin

Relative difficulty: Well, if I'd looked at the revealer clue earlier, Easy, but since I'm stubborn, Medium+

THEME:"RING OF FIRE" (59A: 17-Across hit ... or a hint to four connected answers in this puzzles)— "Fire" must be mentally supplied to the front ends of four different answers, which form what the puzzle is calling a "ring" at the center of the grid. Further, there is bonus (?) JOHNNY CASH MATERIAL for some reason:

Theme answers:

The "Ring" of "Fire":

BALLS (27A: Candies that make your mouth burn)
STONE (28D: Big name in tires)
DANCE (47A: Performance with twirling torches)
BRAND (27D: Agitator seeking radical change)

JOHNNY CASH (17A: The Man in Black)
JOQUIN / PHOENIX (11D: With 40-Down, Oscar-nominated player of 17-Across)

Word of the Day: AUGUSTO Pinochet (12D: Chilean dictator Pinochet) —

Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte (/ˈpiːnoʊʃeɪ/, also US: /-ʃɛt, ˌpiːnoʊˈ(t)ʃɛt/, UK: /ˈpiːnəʃeɪ,ˈpɪn-/, Spanish: [auˈɣusto pinoˈ(t)ʃe(t)]; 25 November 1915 – 10 December 2006) was a Chilean general, politician and dictator of Chile between 1973 and 1990 who remained the Commander-in-Chief of the Chilean Army until 1998 and was also President of the Government Junta of Chile between 1973 and 1981. // Pinochet assumed power in Chile following a United States-backed coup d'état on 11 September 1973 that overthrew the democratically elected socialist Unidad Popular government of President Salvador Allende and ended civilian rule. The support of the United States was crucial to the coup and the consolidation of power afterward. Pinochet had been promoted to Commander-in-Chief of the Army by Allende on 23 August 1973, having been its General Chief of Staff since early 1972. In December 1974, the ruling military junta appointed Pinochet Supreme Head of the nation by joint decree, although without the support of one of the coup's instigators, Air Force General Gustavo Leigh. Following his rise to power, Pinochet persecuted leftists, socialists, and political critics, resulting in the executions of from 1,200 to 3,200 people, the internment of as many as 80,000 people and the torture of tens of thousands. According to the Chilean government, the number of executions and forced disappearances was 3,095. (HAPPY THANKSGIVING!) [...] By the time of his death on 10 December 2006, about 300 criminal charges were still pending against him in Chile for numerous human rights violations during his 17-year rule and tax evasion and embezzlement during and after his rule. He was also accused of having corruptly amassed at least US$28 million. (wikipedia)

• • •

So, first of all, and most importantly, that's a square. A square of fire. We should be done right here. Just stamp "DOA" on this thing and move on. I fell into a burning square of fires. There's something so sad about this puzzle. Such a great song, and such a bizarre theme execution. First of all, as has been established, not a ring. Just not. Nope. Not. Second, there's hardly any *actual* theme material: four 5-letter answers taking up sixteen squares total. In a good theme, we'd get the revealer and then it would reveal something ... substantial. But here there's almost nothing, so instead what we get to fill the considerable amount of leftover space is a tacked-on JOHNNY CASH theme, and not really that at all, but just JOHNNY CASH ... and an actor who played him, who is only here because his first and last names can be made to fit so neatly into the NE / SW corners. So there's a sad little theme (which is flubbed) and then this JOHNNY CASH and the actor who played him theme. They are separate theme concepts, really, but this puzzle has united them in a bizarre and unsatisfying Frankenpuzzle. I would've thought it impossible to ruin a JOHNNY CASH puzzle, but the NYT does miracles every day.

When I got stuckish, around the middle of the puzzle (no surprise), I knew that if I just looked at the revealer (or probable revealer, in the SE corner of the puzzle) I would most likely have a much better idea of what was going on, but I perversely fought my way through the fog until I figured it out without reference to the revealer. I don't think of fireBALLS as candy and I don't really know what a fireDANCE is and none of the other were *obviously* "fire"-starting words, so I had a minor struggle there. There were two other trouble spots for me. The less troubling was the SW, where ... well I've only ever heard it called "sheep's milk," but EWE'S milk, sure, I guess. And SILT clue was hard (55D: It goes with the flow). And ANIL, ugh, crosswordese that I almost forgot existed (61A: Dark blue). Even with PHOENIX in there as a gimme, I got slowed down in there. The more troubling spot, though, was the far north. I just don't accept that FLORA is a [Nursery display]. On some broad literal level, ugh, I guess. But ugh, "excuse me, where do you keep the FLORA?""Oh, what a lovely display of FLORA!" these are not things anyone would say. It's hard enough having to figure out which kind of "nursery" the clue is referring to without this not-in-the-language usage of FLORA. LA CASA is not good fill and the clue was annoying in that Felipe VI has nothing specifically to do with the answer. He's just ... Spanish. So that was tough. Also, because I had no idea re: FLORA, and had LANES as LINES (15A: Supermarket checkout choices), I had MI CASA in there at first.

[2D: TOO LATE]

Surprised anyone knows ONEONTA who doesn't live out here (i.e. in central New York—ONEONTA is just an hour or so away) (41D: College town WSW of Albany). Surprised anyone at all has a deep cotillion vocabulary—STAG LINE??? (36D: Bachelor contingent at a cotillion). I can't even see my wheelhouse from that clue. The only thing I enjoyed about the puzzle was remembering JOHNNY CASH. I guess that's something. So Happy Thanksgiving! Allow me to leave you with the immortal words of JOHNNY CASH's first wife, Vivian Liberto, who said,"The truth is, Johnny wrote that song, while pilled up and drunk, about a certain private female body part" (wikipedia).

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Sam Buchbinder

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: Themeless

Word of the Day: TESSERAE (40A: Art tiles) —

A tessera (plural: tesserae) is an individual tile, usually formed in the shape of a cube, used in creating a mosaic. It is also known as an abaciscus or abaculus. The oldest known tesserae dates to the 3rd millennium BCE, discovered in the ancient city of Shahdad in Kerman province, Iran.

• • •

Howdy from Thanksgiving break in Dallas, Crossworld! Matthew here filling in for Rex before my food coma sets in (I took an inexplicable 2.5-hour nap this afternoon, so we should be good for a bit longer.) To start by echoing a few nice comments on Crossword Twitter,™ I'm truly thankful this year for the folks that make up this beautifully eccentric internet puzzle community. Crosswording (both solving and constructing (and ranting to anyone who will listen)) has taken up a lot more of my time over the past year than I ever expected it to, but it's been a truly great time. Thanks to all y'all for embracing your very smart and slightly strange — and encouraging others to do so as well.

A quick personal note: My new good friend and puzzler extraordinaire, Sid Sivakumar, generously published a 9x9 puzzle of mine on his blog as a guest spot among his fantastic work. There are things I'd change about it now, but it's great to have something I made out in the world. Enjoy!

*Also a good time to mention — if you're interested (even a little bit!) in constructing your own puzzles and don't know where to start, hit up the Crossword Puzzle Collaboration Directory on Facebook and ask to be connected with a mentor (or DM me and I can help you get started as well).

Anyway, the puzzle! Kudos to Sam for his very solid themeless debut with enough lively bonuses in IM THE WORST / LOVE POTION / SMELL TEST / I NEED A LIFT to make for a satisfying solve. (At the end of the day, any puzzle that gives me an excuse to revisit "Madagascar" is a win, however small.) I ended up working my way through clockwise from the NE, down through the SW and SE and then back up to the very beginning. Even though I threw down WON BIG and MORT in the NW out of the gate, I had a tough time parsing the downs and ripped both crosses out (he's not an AYAY, is it?) before realizing that they were actually right.

Looking back on the completed product, I'd characterize my solving pleasure along the middle-diagonal divide — everything blocked off Northwesterly of ELVIN and GAT was for the most part delightful, while the rest was good for a couple grimaces and a couple "meh" moments. The constructor indicated in his blurb for the puzzle that the SW went through several revisions — if it were up to me, I'd press for one more iteration. The OPERACOATS / NOMINAL FEE stack didn't really do anything for me, and with COPSES and LATEN headlining a ho-hum suite of downs, I wonder if there were a better option here. Similar feelings in the SE, where the CANT DO / DOES TO A TEE formed a strange uncanny valley of grammatical correctness for me (for the record, the former is a Shortz-era debut and the latter is an all-time debut.) And TERRORISTS was just ... fine. Doesn't glisten to me, though the surrounding fill is pretty sound — a welcome sight after some more boggy recent puzzles.

Men/male references: MORT, Rabin (in MEIR clue), Jordan (in BULLS clue), ELVIN, BONO (–5)
Women/female references: MEIR (+1)
Bechdel-ish-test tally: –4

Bullets:

IMPS (1A: Scapegraces) — Highlighting this because SCAPEGRACES is actually the coolest word in this entire puzzle. It's fun to say and it's etymology (see below) is super cool. Great clue.
ELVIN (28A: N.B.A. Hall-of-Famer Hayes)— Personally love seeing N.B.A. legends recognized in puzzles. Can someone please debut OLAJUWON (8) in 2020??
BULLS (26D: Organization that Jordan was once part of) — Ibid, your honor.
STRAY CAT (35D: Alley scavenger) — Had SEWER RAT. Happy Black Friday! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Signed, Matthew Stock, Pardoned Turkey of Crossworld

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Constructor: Joe Deeney

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (?) (untimed)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Edward Thomas (6D: Trees that "at the crossroads talk together," in an Edward Thomas poem (ASPENS)) —

Philip Edward Thomas (3 March 1878 – 9 April 1917) was a British poet, essayist, and novelist. He is commonly considered a war poet, although few of his poems deal directly with his war experiences, and his career in poetry only came after he had already been a successful writer and literary critic. In 1915, he enlisted in the British Army to fight in the First World War and was killed in action during the Battle of Arras in 1917, soon after he arrived in France.

"Aspens"

All day and night, save winter, every weather,

Above the inn, the smithy, and the shop,

The aspens at the cross-roads talk together

Of rain, until their last leaves fall from the top.

Out of the blacksmith's cavern comes the ringing

Of hammer, shoe, and anvil; out of the inn

The clink, the hum, the roar, the random singing—

The sounds that for these fifty years have been.

The whisper of the aspens is not drowned,

And over lightless pane and footless road,

Empty as sky, with every other sound

Not ceasing, calls their ghosts from their abode,

A silent smithy, a silent inn, nor fails

In the bare moonlight or the thick-furred gloom,

In tempest or the night of nightingales,

To turn the cross-roads to a ghostly room.

And it would be the same were no house near.

Over all sorts of weather, men, and times,

Aspens must shake their leaves and men may hear

But need not listen, more than to my rhymes.

Whatever wind blows, while they and I have leaves

We cannot other than an aspen be

That ceaselessly, unreasonably grieves,

Or so men think who like a different tree.

• • •

I moved really slowly through this one, but I don't think that had anything to do with difficulty. I was just being methodical, and I had just woken up, or rather I was just being methodical *because* I had just woken up. Trying to speed just after waking is a doomed enterprise. I took a look at this grid and didn't like it one bit, but as I solved, I warmed to it, surprised that those isolated corners weren't much more dire (both in difficulty and quality). Most of what annoys me about this puzzle has to do with the cluing voice, which ... whaddyagonna do, that's the editor's responsibility, and there's nothing to be done about that. We're never gonna agree (as often as I'd like) on what's clever or funny. For instance, 42A: "Abyssinia" (TATA). I first learned about this pun ... today, because even my embarrassingly pun-fond friends wouldn't touch this one (which only works in ... writing?). If you are still baffled, it's supposed to sound like "I'll be seeing you" (hence "TATA!"). So my knowledge that Abyssinia was the name of modern-day Ethiopia, well that did me no good. Plus, I already had TTYL ("talk to you later") in the grid (15D: "Until next time," in a text), so I was sort of surprised to see the puzzle bidding me farewell yet again. I heard you the first time, puzzle. Speaking of clueless cluing, please enjoy the following brief conversation about how women have been completely edited out of (or in no way edited in to) this puzzle:

Not a fan of teeny tiny passageways between grid sections (aggressive quadranting!), but since every section had *two* ways in today, I didn't mind as much (though TATA blocked one entryway to the SE, for sure, and PHAT blocked the other (28A: Dope). I had DIRT before PHAT, which is very much a "bygone" term and should be clued as such. There were a decent number of gimmes, which meant that no one corner every got very crushingly hard. First three Downs, all gimmes (AZTEC, REESE, TRACY). Did not like at all the clue on ZEROES OUT (14A: Eliminates), which I think of something you do to scales or odometers, nor did I like "OUT"'s appearing twice not just in the same puzzle, but in the same quadrant (see LEAP OUT, 5D: Be immediately obvious). But that is a very solid if unglittery NW corner, fine. Couldn't get into SW because of the whole PHAT phiasco, so went in to the middle to discover that my cheese knowledge was poor (Leyden? Boerenkaas?), that it was JAM UP not DAM UP (35A: Clog), and that it was REMIT not REPAY (26D: Compensate for something?). Stil, it could've been worse. Out of there and into the NE, which was the easiest section of all (once I changed YENTES (??) to DISHES (9D: Gossips)).

Not too hard to get into the SE. Somehow BANTAMS came to me with only a little effort (39D: Little chickens), off just the "B," and then I got ENROBE easily, with my brain activity going something like this: "Hmmm [Get ready for court, maybe] ... ugh, they're going to want ENROBE here, aren't they? Why do they insist on cluing justices as if they were chocolate-covered treats!?" Managed to dodge the MESA trap (53D: Tabletop, perhaps was actually SLAB). Just now realizing that this is the corner I finished in, so I must've had a go at the SW earlier. Very much the most daunting, as I couldn't get in from the top and could only back in from ARGUED and MJOLNIR, one of which I didn't know right away and the other of which I forgot how to spell: "... OK there's def a "J" in there and it ends in "-IR" ... stars with "M"? ... and that vowel? ..." (44A: Thor's hammer). I have never been so happy to see an ENERGY drink in my life (41D: ___ drink). From there I could see ICING, which, with the "J" from Thor's hammer got me the JUICE part of PEAR JUICE (lol whaaaaat who is drinking that a. at all, or b. as an [Apple cider alternative]. Apple cider is everywhere this time of year, esp. in these parts (gestures to all of central NY). I've literally never seen PEAR JUICE offered anywhere, or heard anyone utter the words PEAR and JUICE in succession, for that matter. But again, corner after corner, this one was structurally sound and irksome only in its faux-winsome cluing flourishes. Enjoy your last day of November.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. BAKER Street (49D: Renowned London street in literature) is "renowned" because that's where Sherlock Holmes lived, 221B BAKER St. (I had a tabletop game with that exact name as a kid)

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Patrick Merrell

Relative difficulty: Easy (8:50)

THEME:"Actually ..."— themers are terms that are misleading on a literal level:

Theme answers:

25A: ... it abuts water on only one of its four sides (RHODE ISLAND) (not an island)
32A: ... it's an ellipse (ST. PETER'S SQUARE) (not a square)
59A: ... it was predominantly German (HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE) (not really Roman)
83A: ... it's an American name for a German game (CHINESE CHECKERS) (not Chinese)
108A: ... They're of Indian origin (ARABIC NUMERALS) (not Arabic)
118A: ... It's a woodwind from Central Europe (ENGLISH HORN) (not English)
4D: ... It's a rodent native to the Andes (GUINEA PIG) (not ... Guinean?)
16D: ... It's a legume (PEANUT) (not a nut)
85D: ... They're lousy places to sleep (RESTROOMS) (says you!)
100D: ... It usually comes from sheep (CAT GUT) (not made from cat guts)

Word of the Day: Maxim GORKI (sp!?!) (4A: Russian novelist Maxim) —

Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (Russian: Алексе́й Макси́мович Пешко́в or Пе́шков;^[1] 28 March [O.S. 16 March] 1868 – 18 June 1936), primarily known as Maxim Gorky (Russian: Макси́м Го́рький), was a Russian and Soviet writer, a founder of the socialist realism literary method, and a political activist. He was also a five-time nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature.^[3] Around fifteen years before success as a writer, he frequently changed jobs and roamed across the Russian Empire; these experiences would later influence his writing. Gorky's most famous works were The Lower Depths (1902), Twenty-six Men and a Girl (1899), The Song of the Stormy Petrel(1901), My Childhood (1913–1914), Mother (1906), Summerfolk (1904) and Children of the Sun(1905). He had an association with fellow Russian writers Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov; Gorky would later mention them in his memoirs.
Gorky was active with the emerging Marxist social-democratic movement. He publicly opposed the Tsarist regime, and for a time closely associated himself with Vladimir Lenin and Alexander Bogdanov's Bolshevik wing of the party. For a significant part of his life, he was exiled from Russia and later the Soviet Union. In 1932, he returned to the USSR on Joseph Stalin's personal invitation and lived there until his death in June 1936. (wikipedia)

• • •

GORKI is just wrong. Please don't try to lawyer this one, please don't wave some dumbass reference book at me, just know that no one knows him as GORKI. That spelling isn't even mentioned in his wikipedia write-up. It's GORKY. Just as the novel / movie is "GORKY Park." It appears that maybe the Germans stylize him as GORKI. But playing fast and loose with conventional spellings like this is awful. It will make you no friends. It is the worst of olde-timey crossword gimmicks come to life. Eschew avoid and elude this sort of nonsense, please. Bad enough I gotta remember that ENESCO can alos be ENESCU and vice versa. Stop the madness. As for the theme, it's fine. Mansplaining is bleeping annoying irl, and trivia like this just doesn't interest me much, and some of these aren't very "you don't say"-ish. I mean, I am surprised to learn that the ENGLISH HORN is not English, but I'm not sooooo surprised to learn that RESTROOMS are lousy places to sleep. Unless the constructor or Will has tried to sleep in a restroom, I don't count this clue as valid at all. Pictures or it didn't happen. Still, it's an interesting premise for a theme, and some of the revelations were real revelations, so no problems there. Fill-wise, things could've been much better. ASON ASLAP SSTARS and ENDE are really not good. Maybe you can have two of those, if you're desperate, but four is an awful lot. That's in addition to the GORKI baloni, remember. Still, I'm inclined to give this the mildest of thumbs-up(s). It went by quickly and the theme concept kept my interest.

I had my fastest time in something like five months, which is odd, because I feel like I really flailed around a lot, especially at the end. Hard enough to suss out the awful ENDE and RES, whose clue I don't even really understand (57D: Pixelatedness, for short). I guess if it's Hi-RES it has a hi(gh) number of pixels? OK. Still, though, with junk fill like RES, why do you want to draw attention to it. Really hate EXIT SIGNS, since actually (actually!) I don't see actual EXIT SIGNS at the clover leaf near my house (66A: Things around a cloverleaf). I do, however, see a ton (well, four) of EXIT RAMPS, which fits, and is the superior answer. Got through there only to get totally baffled by BOOT (82D: A rancher might pull one over a calf). Totally bit on the misdirect there. Wrong calf, for sure. But still I soldiered onward down that treacherous-feeling east coast until my worst moment—the SSE, where three abutting Downs (ITCH, DYNAMIC, USEBY) all eluded me, as did the ROOMS in RESTROOMS could've been so many things (I like my first answer REST AREAS, much better, because at least I can imagine someone actually *attempting* to sleep there, unlike a restroom, dear lord). This meant that ARABIC NUMERALS was hard to see. I thought maybe ARABIAN ... something. Couldn't get to STAID from 93A: Serious either. At all. Don't think I've ever used STAID to mean "Serious." So, as I say, flailing. And yet I finished under 9. Might've been something close to a record if not for the flailing. Rest of the puzzle I don't really rememeber, which is better than remembering it for the wrong reasons. Low pass. Good day!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Lynn Lempel

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: LOWER THE BAR— Theme answers contain the word BAR, which is in a lower spot each time it appears.

Theme answers:

BARE MINIMUM (3D: Smallest possible amount)
RED BARON (5D: WWI fighter pilot who is Snoopy's fantasy opponent)
LIONEL BARRYMORE (7D: Classic actor who played Mr. Potter in "It's a Wonderful Life")
CABARETS (40D: Businesses like the Kit Kat Klub in a hit musical)
LOWER THE BAR (28D: Reduce one's standards, as illustrated, respectively, in 3-, 5-, 7-, 40- and 28-Down)

Word of the Day: AMES (City that's home to Iowa State) —

Ames (/eɪmz/) is a city in central Iowa approximately 30 miles (48 km) north of Des Moines. It is best known as the home of Iowa State University (ISU), with leading Agriculture, Design, Engineering, and Veterinary Medicine colleges. A United States Department of Energy national laboratory, Ames Laboratory, is located on the ISU campus.
In 2017, Ames had a population of 66,498.^[7] Iowa State University is home to 36,321 students (Fall 2017),^[8] which make up approximately one half of the city's population.
(Wikipedia)

• • •

Annabel Monday! Woohoo! And on time this time, even! I'm still enjoying interning. Capitol Hill is a cool place. But I'm looking to apply to library school next fall! Cross your fingers for me.

I liked this one a lot! And I'm starting to notice that I tend to really like the easy puzzles, which maybe says something about me? But then again, Mondays are supposed to be easy. And at any rate, some really interesting cluing here (amid a couple typical Monday duds like ALPS and ERA). Had TANGOS for SAMBAS which I guess means I need to go back and redo my musical education (especially with stuff like syncopation). I'm not sure that you can just call sheep's milk EWES milk but eh, I'll let it slide. And I'd like to know who a boll weevil isn't a PEST to. I guess to a spider, it's just lunch?

I can't say enough positive things about the theme! There aren't enough Monday themes that really use the crossword format in an interesting way! And this one also worked for Down-only solvers?! Awesome. Everyone, take clues from Ms. Lempel. She really raised the bar with this one. Even if there's no way on earth I would have gotten LIONEL BARRYMORE without crosses.

Bullets:

ECTO (38D: Prefix with plasm) — Did you know I only just saw "Ghostbusters" for the first time a few weeks ago?!?!? Same with "Beetlejuice." I kind of got all my old campy must-see Halloween movies out of the way this year.
OGRE (42A: Fearsome figure of folklore) — Hey, ogres are more than just fearsome! Didn't anyone else have the picture book "Shrek" when they were little? All that dude wanted to do was be gross and be left alone.

POX (59D: Disease that causes a skin rash) — Missed opportunity for a "A pox on both your houses" reference. Just sayin', we had "Moor" (which, is that problematic? I'm not sure), we could have had a very Shakespearean puzzle!
EEL (57D: Long-bodied fish) — That's a moray.

Signed, Annabel Thompson, tired.

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Constructor: Ed Sessa

Relative difficulty: Medium (3:43)

THEME: VOICE / ACTOR (62A: With 64-Across, performer who is like the words sounded out at the starts of the answers to the four starred clues)— "heard but not seen":

Theme answers:

HERD INSTINCT (20A: *Inclination to follow the majority)
BUTT-DIALS (32A: *Phones inadvertently)
KNOT-TYING (43A: *Boy Scout handbook topic)
SCENE STEALER (55A: *One upstaging a star, say)

Word of the Day: HOSEA Williams (14A: Civil rights leader Williams, who was an associate of Martin Luther King, Jr.) —

Hosea Lorenzo Williams (January 5, 1926 – November 16, 2000), was an American civil rightsleader, activist, ordained minister, businessman, philanthropist, scientist, and politician. He may be best known as a trusted member of fellow famed civil rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Martin Luther King, Jr.'s inner circle. Under the banner of their flagship organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, King depended on Williams to organize and stir masses of people into nonviolent direct action in myriad protest campaigns they waged against racial, political, economic, and social injustice. King alternately referred to Williams, his chief field lieutenant, as his "bull in a china closet" and his "Castro". Vowing to continue King's work for the poor, Williams is well known in his own right as the founding president of one of the largest social services organizations in North America, Hosea Feed the Hungry and Homeless. His famous motto was "Unbought and Unbossed." (wikipedia)

• • •

This is some cornball stuff. The theme answers themselves are mostly fine on their own, but this kind of awful pun just does nothing for me. It's not even truly, godawfully awful. It's just a bunch of homophones. The most annoying thing is probably the clue on the revealer, which a. tells you nothing about the answer itself, and b. is worded terribly. The performer is not "like the words," they're like the *phrase* made by the words. Plus, stylistically, the revealer is just a pedantic garble of phrases: "... like the ... at the ... of the ... to the ..." Stick the landing on the revealer (and revealer clue) or absolutely do not attempt a "sound out the pun"-type theme. ARF! To make matters slightly worse, there's some truly bad fill in here. Like, retro bad. Mothball bad. ASOU!? (37A: Not worth ___ (valueless) Wow. We're really still doing that one? I feel like it's only there to make you forget about the ordinary tired crosswordese like ONEL, ALB, SRO, and ABES, which is still not a thing, no matter how much the NYTXW tries to push it. "Hey, you got any ABES on you?" asks no one. Fives are "fins" or "fivers." When it comes to bills with political nicknames, it's Benjamins and ... that's it. Collectively, you can call money "Dead Presidents" (even if that does feel a little '90s rappish, i.e. dated). But ABES, no. And crossing ABS!? No no.

The puzzle was reasonably easy but dang if I didn't get wickedly slowed down by SLASHMARK (6D: Punctuation that may mean "or"). Just no idea. I think the main reason is I would just call it a SLASH ... so weirdly even with SLASHM-R-, my brain wouldn't process it. SLASHMORE!? Also, I'm pretty sure I put in HERD INSTINCT immediately after getting the HERD part from crosses, but for Some reason I second-guessed it and removed it. Not sure what precipitated that, but stupid move, for sure. Otherwise, there were only a few other bumps along the way. Didn't know HOSEA. Thought 47A: Soak one's bib (DROOL) was some kind of idiom for drinking. Never considered that "one's" would be from the ... baby's perspective!? Very cool clue on BRIDE (61A: One of two on some wedding cakes)—so cool that I didn't read it as referring to same-sex marriage. I had trouble processing the clue, and then figured that "One of two" meant "one of the two figures, which are, of course, the bride and groom." But I'm pretty sure this one's gay, which is cool. Hooray for KNOT-TYING with whoever you love!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

"EAT ME, LESTER" is a great row. "AWAKE, KEN GOOSE!" is a close second.

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Constructor: Evan Mahnken

Relative difficulty: So easy it was obviously misplaced. The whole world is setting personal records. I was groggy and typed *horribly* and still solved faster than most Tuesdays (3:27)

THEME: I think so: these appear to be logical fallacies, clued in the style of the argument that they represent (?), and containing the subject matter that they *appear* to represent, if you take their idiomaticness literally. Sigh. Themes that take this much explaining should maybe rethink their reason for being

Theme answers:

STRAW MAN FALLACY (17A: "Scarecrow thinks the only thing one needs is a brain. It's not!") — without context, it's hard to see that this is what it says it is, i.e. that this clue is an example of the the answer it's cluing. This goes for all of these themers, really. Maybe the scarecrow *actually* argued that the only thing one needs is a brain, How Would I Know?
SLIPPERY SLOPE (28A: "If we let our kids go sledding, what's next? Extreme skiing?") — this one works
CHERRY PICKING (43A: "As you can tell from these few examples, Bings are better than maraschinos") — doesn't work, for so many reasons, not least of which is no one making a CHERRY PICKING argument would tell you that they have cited only a "few examples," and anyway, how many damn cherries Do you have to eat to know that Bings are better!? I mean, those are really really Really different cherries. In fact, maraschinos are a treated cherry, not a variety like Bings. "A maraschino cherry [...] is a preserved, sweetened cherry, typically made from light-colored sweet cherries such as the Royal Ann, Rainier, or Gold varieties." (wikipedia) What's the logical fallacy where you compare apples and oranges called? BOOOOOO!
MOVING GOALPOSTS (58A: "Expanding the bleachers isn't enough. We need to relocate the whole stadium") —again, without context, no way to tell this is actually an example of an argumentative fallacy

Word of the Day: DEBRA Winger (9A: Actress Winger) —

Debra Lynn Winger (born May 16, 1955) is an American actress. She starred in the films An Officer and a Gentleman (1982), Terms of Endearment (1983), and Shadowlands (1993), each of which earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. She won the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actress for Terms of Endearment, and the Tokyo International Film Festival Award for Best Actress for A Dangerous Woman (1993). Her other film roles include Urban Cowboy (1980), Legal Eagles (1986), Black Widow (1987), Betrayed (1988), Forget Paris(1995), and Rachel Getting Married (2008). In 2012, she made her Broadway debut in the original production of the David Mamet play The Anarchist. In 2014, she received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Transilvania International Film Festival.
She currently stars as a series regular in the Netflix original television series The Ranch. (wikipedia)

• • •

Er. Uh. I guess your friends on the debate team might think this is cute? I just found it tiresome. But luckily I didn't really have to find it anything at all, because it was stupid easy. Like, how-is-this-even-Wednesday easy. I had a teeny bit of trouble getting off the ground (wrote in JIBES before JESTS because I don't know my JIBES from my GIBES (1D: Joking remarks); also, took some amount of working to see FALLACY instead of ARGUMENT), but after that, any resistance was created by my terrible early-morning typing and grid navigation. By the time I finished, I had no idea what this puzzle was supposed to be about. Just looked like idioms that someone was taking literally, and imagining it was somehow funny to do so, which is a child's idea of humor. But it turns out the idioms are all from the same world (argumentation), clued as a version of what they are ... which, I'll grant you, is layered, but in this smug aint-I-a-stinker kind of way that is just annoying. Give the solver a revealer. If what you are doing here is any good, it should a. announce itself clearly (it doesn't), or b. be announced clearly by a good revealer (it isn't). The grid is choppy and full of easy 3- to 5-letter answers, i.e. there's just nothing of interest here outside of the themers. Also, MOVING GOALPOSTS sounds weird to my ears. I'm sure that's the technical term for that particular logical fallacy, but I've heard it only with the "THE" in it. People will have good will toward this puzzle because it was ego-boostingly easy. But they shouldn't.

What is there even to say about this? There's nothing particularly remarkable outside the theme. The fill skews bland / stale (LAMAS, ORONO, ENO, ELLE, ODS, ONEND) but nothing you'd really yelp about. I'd call it Newsday-clean. If you've ever solved the daily Newsday puzzle (mine comes in my local paper) you know that 6 days out of 7 it is very easy, and the fill is not exciting but it is also only very rarely repulsive. They're fun to solve Downs-only. Good practice. Anyway ... oh right, OPRY OPERA OPAL OPEC OSHA OTTER ONO OER, just O's ON END, and who cares, O-nestly?

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. here's a huge list of fallacies, if you somehow care (note that here it is indeed MOVING *the* GOALPOSTS)
P.P.S. I do like the clue on OSHA (35D: Group concerned with things that are NSFW?); just thought I'd try to end on a hight note
P.P.P.S. Happy birthday, JAY-Z. You are now my age.

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Constructor: Neville Fogarty

Relative difficulty: Medium (6:03)

THEME: OVER!— circled squares each contain a letter which, when followed by "OVER," form the front ends of the theme answers (that they are, literally, over, i.e. on top of):

Theme answers:

(M) over S AND SHAKERS (20A: Power players)
(S) over EIGN STATE (30A: Any member of the United Nations)
(C) over ED BRIDGES (49A: Wooden crossings that provide protection from the weather)
(G) over NMENT AGENCY (58A: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, for one)

Word of the Day: BALTO (64A: Celebrated husky) —

Balto (1919 – March 14, 1933) was a Siberian Husky and sled dog who led his team on the final leg of the 1925 serum run to Nome, in which diphtheria antitoxin was transported from Anchorage, Alaska, to Nenana, Alaska, by train and then to Nome by dog sled to combat an outbreak of the disease. Balto was named after the Sami explorer Samuel Balto. Balto rested at the Cleveland Zoo until his death on March 14, 1933, at the age of 14. After he died, his body was stuffed and kept in the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, where it remains today. (wikipedia)

• • •

If there had been any way for to grasp what was going on before I was finished, maybe I would've enjoyed this. The gimmick is certainly clever. But from a solving standpoint, I was just filling in long Across answers with nonsense I didn't get, so that even though I completed it in a regular old Thursday time, the feeling was ... a bad one. I really wish the clues had been even a little more helpful. Usually in a puzzle like this, or in a rebus, I eventually hit an answer that makes me realize "Aha, *this* is what is going on!" That moment just never came today. Clues were all so vague as to be useless, or so bizarrely worded (see that ED BRIDGES clue) that, well, also useless. I started out wondering what SAND SHAKERS were and then things really went to hell. Ending up with EIGN STATE was just demoralizing. I saw the circled squares, but they just seemed randomly strewn about to me. I have no idea how I ended up solving it successfully in a respectable time. I guess that's the sign of a puzzle that, in all other respects, is well made. Fill is not showy, but it'll do. The theme just missed me. I can respect the construction, but I can't rewrite history and say that solving this was fun. ALAS.

Aside from, you know, never grasping the theme concept, there were two major slow-downs for me. First (and this is theme-related), I had E-GN-T--- for [Any member of the United Nations and I genuinely thought it was something (EGG?) NATION, which, now that I look at the clue again, I see was never going to fly. I guess when you get desperate, you forget that clue words can't actually be answer words. ALAS. Honestly, EIGN STATE was sooo rough for me. The other slow-down was HORN for HONK (54A: Traffic signal?). Weird how a little (plausible) thing like that can throw a wrench in things. I honestly broke down halfway through this thing and had to resort to roaming the vast empty areas of the south looking for any kind of toehold (which I finally got thanks to my good old friend John OATES (55D: Hall's singing partner)). Oh, and I just blanked on "ANNABEL LEE," even with ANNA in the grid; in fact, *because* ANNA was in the grid—since it's a complete name in and of itself, my brain didn't consider it might be part of a larger name. If I'd taken a few moments to hum the basic rhythm of the poem to myself, I probably would've hit on the title sooner, but when I'm solving I don't like to stop to do ... anything if I don't have to. No idea who ABNER was on "Bewitched." Can't even picture him. . . oh, looks like ABNER Kravitz was married to Gladys, who would always see the magic happening next door and then tell her husband ABNER to come look, but by then there would be no magic. Wah Waaaah. Even looking at ABNER I don't remember him. Gladys, though, is hard to forget:

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Andrew J. Ries

Relative difficulty: Easy-to-Medium

THEME: Themeless

Word of the Day: SYNOD (24D: Bishop's gathering) —

An assembly of the clergy and sometimes also the laity in a diocese or other of a particular Church. Secondarily, a Presbyterian ecclesiastical court above the presbyteries and subject to the General Assembly

• • •

Hello, Crossworld - I am Whit, stepping in to blog for Rex because he's got the Andrew Wyeth blues. I'm a long-time reader of the blog and I started regularly doing the NYT crossword when I stole my wife's log-in information eight years ago. Now we do it together - by which I mean that whichever one of us gets to it first gets to do it. 10 PM Eastern is a battleground in our home, but I won out for Friday. Let's see what Shortz & Co. got up to today.

This is my dog. She's a mutt, and thus, she might very well have some 56A (clue) in her. She definitely has needed 56A (answer) before.

I think this is a welterweight crossword, difficulty-wise. It took me almost twice as long as my best time for Fridays, but far below the overall average. (I always solve on the mobile app.) I blasted through the SE and SW corners before I found myself briefly pickled in the NE. That cost me a lot of time, though I wasn't playing for speed today. (I was playing for you, reader. I put your erudition over my stats. I'm selfless.) I found pockets of cleverness around the grid, and what I found, I liked.

The puzzle is pleasantly light on classic crossword crutches. There's an OVA and an RDA and an ITA, of course, but for small fill, I liked the clues for NUN (31A: One with a habit), SPY (25D: One who bugs another person?), and LOT (19A: Something cast in cleromancy.) I'm not a cleromancer, but this is a far better choice than just rolling the dice on something standard like "Property Unit" or "Crying of ____ 49."

The grid opens up across the middle for some good longer answers. The cluing is very ho-hum, but the grid placement is fun. I'm not a crossword constructor, so I don't know how much this factors into creating a puzzle, but I enjoy patterns and pairings within the grid. I think that's a sign that the constructor, for all their necessary focus on words and letters and word-letter intersections, is attuned to the beauty of letters as objects. I thought the dietary duo of PAREVE and LESSSALT were happy neighbors, plus, look at that pile of Ss. So much fun to see. The answer looks like it's ready to wriggle off the screen. LETTUCEWRAP and LECTURE TOUR have good visual symmetry next to each other - a waterfall of L/E/T/U cascading over crosses like SPORTUTILITY, TUCKS and SINEW. When the grid is full, you get a flush of typographical harmony. The same thing happens with SWIMUPSTREAM and MAKEUPARTIST. The clue for the latter, by the way, was charming: (46A: Dressing room attendant.) It could go a number of directions, but it lands right where it wants to be. I also enjoyed PROFIT and LIE IDLE as capitalist contrasts on the same line. It's said you can't have one while doing the other, but I bet whoever said that was in management.

As I said, none of the clues make me swoon, but I also didn't find myself grinding my teeth. Out of the gate, I thought ADWARS (1A: Samsung-versus-Apple and others) was clunky, but I just excused myself from the NW corner and played with the cool clues for answers like HIPPO and MINER. Way more fun to be had there. Who cares about Samsung and Apple's battle for phone supremacy when you can learn about new, exciting avenues for illegal ivory dealing. I didn't know you could get ivory from a hippo! (Don't deal in legal or illegal ivory. It's cruel to animals and you could never grow the kind of mustache necessary to pull it off in style.)

So, yeah: a pleasant little Friday jaunt. When it worked, it really worked, and when it didn't, it passed from my memory without a blip. Thanks to Rex for letting me pitch-in. I love this blog.

Four Things

36A: Power cord? (SINEW) — This was a good clue. I had a few of the downs already so it was obvious when I came to answer it, but I still like it.
15A: Containing neither meat nor dairy (PAREVE) This wasn't a word I knew, but it was a word that I immediately recognized as one I'd forgotten. It would have been my word of the day, but it was the word of the day nearly 10 years ago and I didn't want a repeat. PAREVE had its time in the sun.
7A: Regular at a fitness center (GYMRAT) — This is a curiously pejorative answer for an anodyne clue, but I like it because I think more things should have the -rat appendage. Do you make your living working in technology? You're a KeyboardRat. Do you like to spend Saturday morning buying produce at the farmer's market? You're a TotebagRat. Do you like to do the crossword each day? You're a kinder, smarter, more attractive person with better posture than your slouching and deviant friends, who are all SudokuRats.
56A: Clean, as a lab coat? (DEFLEA)— God-level clue to round out the puzzle. Who cares that it's not a word that anyone ever says. It's a dog thing and I really liked it!

Signed, Whit Vann, Pretender to the Baronage of the Southwest Corner of Crossworld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

[Do what no one else does and follow Whit Vann on Twitter.]

Constructor: Kevin G. Der and Erik Agard

Relative difficulty: Challenging (11:56)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: AMOS Tutuola (10D: Nigerian novelist Tutuola)—

Amos Tutuola (20 June 1920 – 8 June 1997) was a Nigerian writer who wrote books based in part on Yoruba folk-tales. [...] Tutuola's most famous novel, The Palm-Wine Drinkard and his Dead Palm-Wine Tapster in the Deads' Town, was written in 1946, first published in 1952 in London by Faber and Faber, then translated and published in Paris as L'Ivrogne dans la brousse by Raymond Queneau in 1953. Poet Dylan Thomas brought it to wide attention, calling it "brief, thronged, grisly and bewitching". Although the book was praised in England and the United States, it faced severe criticism in Tutuola's native Nigeria. Part of this criticism was due to his use of "broken English" and primitive style, which supposedly promoted the Western stereotype of "African backwardness". This line of criticism has, however, lost steam. (wikipedia)

• • •

Saw the constructor names and thought "O dang, this is gonna be hard." Then I got a little bit of the way in and ... the NW pretty much just fell. I mean, not Super easy, but very doable. So I thought, "Hey, maybe this isn't gonna be so bad." And I made my way down the west coast, and then ... nothing. Stuck. Tried to move into the NE—nope. Lucked into a good first guess at 34D: "Go ahead, ask" (FIRE AWAY) and got the far SE done, but even then, even with chunks filled in here and there, all over the grid, I was flailing for much of this. I just sort of ... oozed my way to the end. I'd say HEADBANDS, on the one hand, and CLOMP, on the other, were the twin epicenters of my trouble. Had HEADBA--S but couldn't see how clue could work with "S" at end (which, honestly, should've been and probably was ultimately the thing that made me realize [Do loops?] was a noun and not a verb phrase. As for CLOMP, my goodness (28D: Really hit one's stride?) ... I had ELOPE in there at one point, with ERIE (wrong) OGLE (right) and LOW FAT (right) "confirming" it. I didn't understand how that clue could point to ELOPE, but I figured, it's Saturday, I'm sure it's just one of those tricky clues that I'll grasp later. Hoo-whee, wrong. Pretty clear now, in retrospect, that finally figuring out the symmetrical answers HEADBANDS and WRAP PARTY (which ELOPE was blocking) was what turned me from dead-stuck to slowly moving. After WRAP PARTY, the SW wasn't too hard. NE proved much tougher, though it somehow took me a long time to even look at 4A: The "dark" in a Dark and Stormy, perhaps (JAMAICAN RUM), which really would've helped me, as I could've at least guessed the RUM part. Anyway, finally got the Puzzle Solved! signal at the "M" in AMOS (who, along with sounds-like-a-"Star Wars"-villain ASTATINE and not-"SHERRI"-or-"DIANNE"-but "RONNIE," I'd never heard of). (10D: Nigerian novelist Tutuola + 35D: Rarest naturally occurring element in the earth's crust + 12D: Name that's the title of a 1964 4 Seasons hit)

Here's just a list of all the ways things went bad:

The Things:

1A: Shaken thumb, in American Sign Language (TEN) — no idea
18A: How a security guard might say goodbye? (GOTTA BOUNCE) — this is actually terrible corny wordplay, not a proper "?" clue. 42A: Setting for a plastered cast? (WRAP PARTY)—*That* is a proper "?" clue.
24A: Mascot of the W.N.B.A.'s Mystics (PANDA) — wanted the name of some ... wizard or magician or famous ... mystic? But it's just ... PANDA? Does she even have a name?
25A: Most actors don't hold real ones, informally (CIGS) — a. hard!, b. really?? I've seen so many actors smoke on screen I just don't know where the "most" is coming from here.
28A: Language from which "Saskatchewan" comes (CREE) — As I mentioned above, I had ERIE here
33A: Light on packaging (LOW-FAT) — The lack of quotation marks around "Light" feels like a crime
39A: League leader, informally (COMMISH) — ohhhhh, the person in charge of the league. Not the team in first place. Sigh. Gotcha.
40A: E.U. alliance (G-SIX) — me: ".... UNIX? Like ... les états ... unix?"
48A: Opposite of calm (PANIC) — any other MANICs out there? ... anyone? ...
54A: Patchwork? (BETA RELEASE) — I don't even get this one. I thought betas were pre-releases? So what's being ... patched? Exactly? Also, ask me how excited I am by STEM-related jargon ...
44D: Japanese city on Tokyo Bay (CHIBA) — I know a martial arts actor named CHIBA, but Japanese city ... no, can't say it rings a bell. I was like "is there really a city named CHINA ... in Japan?")

4D: The tunes "The Blarney Pilgrim" and "The Lark in the Morning," e.g. (JIGS) — I mean ... if you say so ...
9D: Yoga pose similar to Upward-Facing Dog (COBRA) — baffled by this (at first), which is highly amusing for many reasons, not least of which is the fact that I was in both updog and COBRA as recently as Tuesday night. Sigh.
36D: Energy regulators in the body (THYROIDS) — my dumb ass seriously wrote in ADYNOIDS at one point, wow

All that, on top of the previously mentioned trouble with HEADBANDS, CLOMP, AMOS, "RONNIE," ASTATINE, etc. I'm probably most mad at the fact that I got NEKO CASE almost entirely from crosses without ever having looked at the clue—that would've been a gimme for me!! Would've felt great to just throw it down with no help from crosses, bam. But that's one of the weird things about solving—no telling where your eyes are gonna go first. I've got a bad habit of really really holding off on even looking at the longer clues until I've dealt with their shorter crosses. Mostly this works, but sometimes, esp. if I get frustrated with the shorter stuff, I *forget* to just at least *check* the clues on the longer answers. I assume I'll *need* the shorter crosses to make sense of the long stuff. But not always. Anyway, a worthy, hard puzzle that made me feel bad about myself! Which is my problem, not (mostly) the puzzle's.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Emily Carroll

Relative difficulty: Medium (10:04)

THEME:"Lookin' Good!" — "EASY ON THE EYES" is represented literally by the letter pair "EZ" atop the letter pair "II" five times in this grid (110A: Good-looking ... or a phonetic hint to a feature found five times in this puzzle)

THE "II" answers:

BALI, INDONESIA (27A: Popular Asian honeymoon destination)
BOYZ II MEN (41A: Top musical group of the 1990s, per Billboard)
KRISTEN WIIG (62A: "S.N.LL." alum who co-starred in 2016's "Ghostbusters")
NINTENDO WII (77A: Game console introduced in 2006)
JACOB RIIS (96A: New York social reformer whose name is on a Manhattan housing project)

Word of the Day: AKINETIC (4D: Unable to move well) —

: of, relating to, or affected by akinesia [(n.): loss or impairment of voluntary activity (as of a muscle)] (merriam-webster.com)

• • •

This is a Wednesday idea dressed up in Sunday clothes. Like a child wearing dad's coat. This is a one-note joke and would've been better executed on a smaller scale, with three good examples, a *clean grid* (which we're sadly missing today), and a revealer, the end. But to go through this long a puzzle, through no real wordplay or interesting answers, through a grid laden with semi- to very-cringey fill, just to get to that clown-honk of a revealer, well that's just disappointing. Very much a letdown. A lot of work and machete-ing through rough terrain, and for what? Some brackish water. I've lost my metaphor's thread, but I believe my point is clear enough. Wednesday, clean grid—theme might be tolerable, even enjoyable. Sunday, junky grid—theme defenstratable.

I don't really care to list alllll of the fill I found unpleasant, but there really was a good amount of it, from the ordinary dross (RIAL ATTN ASSN DIR SASE NENE ESS DINAR ALEE) to the next-level dross (OLY OLA ODO EZINE SERS XVI), from preposterous near-words (EDIFIER RESEW AGREER NERVED NESTERS STEP A) to Germaniamania (KLEINE EIS) to things you'd never say (NINE TO) (!?) to whatever AKINETIC is. 'TWERE rough, is what I'm saying. Felt like I couldn't get very far without hitting another jarring little bump. Even the sassy stuff seemed off. MYB is a little too cutesy for me (52A: "I messed up," in slang). "MY BAD" so much better (in real life and in the grid). And I thought it was LULZ (65A: Response to a funny meme). Hmm (checks internets), looks like LULZ is the "corruption," which, seriously, LOL. BALIINDONESIA feels redundant (it's BALI). NINTENDOWII feels redundant (it's just WII). Weren't there even a few moments where I was happy? WHY, YES, there were. But not enough. Not nearly enough.

Five things:

58A: Clothing designer Marc (ECKO) — I need some kind of mnemonic to help me tell ECKO from EKCO (the kitchen utensil company). I botched it today.
16D: Colorless gases (ETHENES) — well there's an answer to warm your heart, eh? EH!? Ugh.
20A: Ashton Kutcher's role on "That '70s Show" (KELSO) — first answer I got. I'm not proud... but you take your gimmes where you find them.
55D: Part of a short race (GNOME) — OK that clue is somewhat clever in its misdirection
55A: One shouting "Get off my lawn!" (GEEZER)— I'll have you know I'm only 50! Now git!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. next week I'll do a little Crossword Holiday Gift Guide for you all. If you've got anything that you really think should be on said guide, please give me a holler. Thx.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Ellis Hay

Relative difficulty: Easy (2:48)

THEME: plural colors — 15-letter phrases that end with a plural color (if there's more to it, I clearly don't know what it is):

Theme answers:

VALENCIA ORANGES (17A: Sweet citrus fruits from Southern California)
CLEVELAND BROWNS (26A: Only N.F.L. team that doesn't have a logo on its helmets)
RHODE ISLAND REDS (47A: Some chickens)
"HILL STREET BLUES" (61A: Hit 1980s cop show)

Word of the Day: Abba EBAN (25A: Abba of Israel) —

Abba Eban ([...] born Aubrey Solomon Meir Eban; later adopted Abba Solomon Meir Eban; 2 February 1915 – 17 November 2002) was an Israeli diplomat and politician, and a scholar of the Arabic and Hebrew languages.
In his career, he was Israeli Foreign Affairs Minister, Education Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, and ambassador to the United States and to the United Nations. He was also Vice President of the United Nations General Assembly and President of the Weizmann Institute of Science. (wikipedia)

• • •

Another day, another "Is that it?" It's hard to imagine why "phrases that end in plural colors" would be an NYT-worthy theme. There is the structural / architectural fact of the answers all being 15 letters long, but so what? I don't see how that is terribly remarkable or how it adds any kind of enjoyment to the solve. I expect a theme like this out of a ... let's say "lesser daily" puzzle. Much lesser, actually. And I'd have to say the same thing about the fill. There's not much in the grid to make you wince, but its over-reliant on the hoary and familiar, for sure. Mainly it's just dull. And two ugly partials? (IASK, ACAR). In a grid this easy to fill? I just don't see how this is up to snuff. And if your theme is going to revolve around colors, you probably shouldn't have any colors anywhere else in the grid. Makes things cleaner and more elegant that way (lookin' at you, WHITE) (30D: "___ Christmas" (holiday song)). Attention to details matters!

There's really nothing to say here. This is the second time I'm seeing NILS Lofgren in a puzzle in the past few days, though the last time I saw him (and I already forget where ... one of those puzzles I solve Downs-Only, like the LAT or Newsday) he appeared in full-name form. I feel like I haven't seen him in forever, and that his fame is maybe not what it was 20-40 years ago. But he's been a crossword MAINSTAY forever, so current fame be damned! Most constant solvers will know him and the youths can just catch up, I guess. See also Abba EBAN, whose name elements I continue to transpose / not know the proper order of. EBAN Abba sounds perfectly fine to me. I tore through this puzzle, for the most part. I hesitated some at 3D: Like Lindbergh's 1927 flight to Paris (speaking of erstwhile fame) (SOLO), and then dumbly tried to write in EDHARRIS when I saw the EDH- at the front of 43D: Actor who played Andy Bernard on "The Office" (ED HELMS). This is why you should read *all* of the clue and not just the first word before starting to fill in the answer. Still, none of these hesitations set me back much—I'm back in the 2:40s for the second week in a row (after having what felt like months of sluggish-for-me Mondays). But breeziness is not enough. The theme should have a solid hook, something to make it cohere more than just the last words belonging to the same very general category of thing. More than identical lengths. More.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Eric Berlin

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (3:46)

THEME: the big brawl — All theme clues begin, "At the big brawl..." and then, well, the clue and answers basically indulge in boxing puns:

Theme answers:

CAME OUT SWINGING (16A: At the big brawl, the jazz musician ...)
BOBBED AND WEAVED (36A: At the big brawl, the hairstylist ...)
PUT UP THEIR DUKES (55A: At the big brawl, the king and queen ...)

Word of the Day: UPI (58D: News letters) —

United Press International (UPI) is an international news agency whose newswires, photo, news film, and audio services provided news material to thousands of newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations for most of the 20th century. At its peak, it had more than 6,000 media subscribers. Since the first of several sales and staff cutbacks in 1982, and the 1999 sale of its broadcast client list to its rival, the Associated Press, UPI has concentrated on smaller information-market niches. (wikipedia)

• • •

This was a middle-of-the-road puzzle from the 20th century. The gag is corny and kind of forced—"At the big brawl..."?? You say that like it's a normal kind of event. Like ... what? *The* big brawl? What? When? Where? I can imagine. Big party, big race, big sporting event ... I can imagine hypothetical theme answers taking place at the big a lot of things, but brawl? No. The very premise of this theme is hard for me to imagine. And anyway, these are specifically *boxing* puns. And did the king and queen ... like, get their dukes (their? possessive?) to fight in their stead, is that the joke. I mean, obviously the joke is king and queen are titles of nobility, and so is duke, but again, the situational premise is unclear and/or preposterous. Also old-fashioned (in a not-bad way) is the use of just three themers. That used to be much more common, but themes are usually at least a little denser these days. I have no problem with thinner themes if a. they are fantastic, and b. the fill is great. Thin themes should equal fantastic fill, and this ain't it. A bunch of longer answers, but they're just wasted. I mean, ABREASTOF is nothing anyone's gonna cheer for. NACHOCHIP ... is a different from a tortilla chip how? Everything just felt ... unflavored. Plain.

The thing that really killed it for me, though, was ACNED (29D: Benefiting from benzoyl peroxide say). I'm sure it's a word, it's just ... not a good one. I'm actually stunned to see that it has now appeared seven (7) times since I started blogging. I must've blocked all those others out. I think of that word as a joke because Raymond Chandler went after Ross Macdonald for using it once in a very memorable letter to mystery critic James Sandoe, and then Macdonald found out Chandler was trashing him behind his back and spent the rest of his life seething in resentment. Here's a passage from the letter:

A car is "acned with rust", not spotted [...] "The seconds piled up
precariously like a tower of poker chips", etc. The simile that does
not quite come off because it doesn't understand what the purpose of
the simile is [...] When you say "spotted with rust" (or pitted, and
I'd almost but not quite go for"pimpled") you convey at once a
simple visual image. But when you say "acned with rust" the
attention of the reader is instantly jerked away from the thing
described to the pose of the writer. This is of course a very simple
example of the stylistic misuse of language, and I think that
certain writers are under a compulsion to write in recherche phrases
as a compensation for a lack of some kind of natural animal emotion.
They feel nothing, they are literary eunuchs, and therefore
they fall back on an oblique terminology to prove their
distinction.

Ever since I read this letter (in the course of writing an article on the Macdonald/Chandler relationship) I've never been able to take the word ACNED seriously, as all it makes me think of is cruddy, amateurish writing. Chandler was undeniably a jerk much of the time. But man he could write. I know Macdonald has his devotees, but ... find me the absolute best sentence in any Macdonald novel, and I'll open to a *random* page of The Long Goodbye and find a better one. People say Chandler couldn't plot to save his life. Knopf himself once wrote of Chandler: "He just can't build a plot: in fact, I don't think he even tries." To which I say, when you write that beautifully, who cares? I don't read Chandler for the intricacies of plot or to find out who "done it." I read him to live in a beautiful sad fallen world, one where I can smell the cigarettes, taste the whiskey, hear the surf, and feel the disillusionment. . . . aaaaaanyway, I didn't care for ACNED, is what I'm saying. The whole thing just was not for me. Again, not bad. I'd call it very competent last-century work.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. LOL the clue on DIDO (37D: Aeneas' love). Lavinia's gonna be so mad when she hears ...

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Alternative to ChapStick / THU 11-21-19 / Channing with 14-year NBA career / Alki for Washington State / Peak in Thessaly / Sound recording copyright symbols

Half of former sitcom duo / FRI 11-22-19 / Summa cum laude spoiler / Animals whose name is derived from Latin for little thief / Troubadour's accompaniment / Black Jeopardy show for short

Contemporaries of Pharisees Sadducees / SAT 11-23-19 / Rap group with six grammys / Predominant language in Darjeeling / City that's home to Mausoleum of Aga Khan / Borderer of Mekong / Muslim magistrates / Low-cost carrier based in Kuala Lumpur / She accompanied Ferris on his day off

1986 Keith Haring antidrug mural / MON 11-25-19 / Batter's grip-enhancing goo / Distinctively shelled bivalves

Squire in Wind in Willows / TUE 11-26-19 / Classic American novel set in France Spain / Anxiety about exclusion per modern acronym

Central courtyards / WED 11-27-19 / Dreamcast maker of old / Diktat / Sci-fi sighting

Bachelor contingent at cotillion / THU 11-28-19 / Dessert drink made with frozen grapes / California city whose name sounds like surprised two-word greeting / Chocolatier of children's literature / First saint of Russian orthodox church

Scapegraces / FRI 11-29-19 / "My car's out of commission" / On-scene reporter, in journalist lingo / One making a pet's vet appointment

Island once called Serendip / SAT 11-30-19 / 1975 hit with classic saxophone solo / Alternative to Leyden Boerenkaas / Eponymous candy man / Funny Morgan / Bliblical starting material / Noted parliamentary measure of 1773 / Renowned London street in literature

Sci-fi character depicted as glowing red dot / SUN 12-1-19 / Flanged structural support / Onetime home of Vikings Twins / Umami enhancer for short / Salt's hip-hop counterpart / Hindu tradition that's two men's names in reverse / Eponym of London insurer

Hurt in the bullring / MON 12-2-2019 / Sean Penn and Guy Ritchie, to Madonna / High point / Many an Eastern European

Seeress of ancient Greece / TUE 12-3-19 / Civil rights leader Williams who was associate of Martin Luther King Jr / Liturgical vestment / Ermine by another name

Boss of Oompa-Loompas / WED 12-4-19 / Appliance company acquired by Raytheon in 1965 / Head in classic Hasbro toy / Group concerned with things that are NSFW

Neighbor on TV's Bewitched / THU 12-5-19 / TV show with three stars / Host Tyler of Whose Line Is It Anyway / Media protector introduced in '80s

Bishop's gathering / FRI 12-6-19 / Power cord? / Low-carb sandwich / Regular at a fitness center

West Coast brew for short / SUN 12-8-19 / Impossible is Nothing sloganeer / Knights titles in Game of Thrones / Buddy Holly band 1994 / Popular Asian honeymoon destination / Saudi king before Abdullah / World's rarest goose / Hallucinogen sometimes called divine messenger

Actor who played Andy Bernard on Office / MON 12-9-19 / Cheap in commercial names / Hit 1980s cop show / Sweet citrus fruits from Southern California / Weather phenomena from Pacific / Like Lindbergh's 1927 flight to Paris

Mentalist Geller / TUE 12-10-19 / Last O.G. network / Dippable snack item / Lizard in insurance ads / Savory quality as from MSG