Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle

Constructor: Tom Pepper

Relative difficulty: Medium (not sure, solved on paper in leisurely fashion)

Theme: none

Word of the Day: NOYES (32D: Poet whose name consists of side-by-side opposites) —

Alfred Noyes CBE (16 September 1880 – 25 June 1958) was an English poet, short-story writer and playwright. [...] "The Highwayman" is a romantic ballad poem written by Alfred Noyes, first published in the August 1906 issue of Blackwood's Magazine, based in Edinburgh, Scotland. The following year it was included in Noyes' collection, Forty Singing Seamen and Other Poems, becoming an immediate success. In 1995 it was voted 15th in the BBC's poll for "The Nation's Favourite Poems". (wikipedia)

• • •

I see that this grid has a bunch of reasonably modern answers, and yet the smell of mothballs and mildew and staleness on this one is Strong. Puzzle started losing me almost immediately with a. a "?" clue at 1-Across (I wasn't in the mood to start that way) and (more substantively) b. BOFF. If I have to think of this (olde-timey, right?) bit of Broadway slang, it's BOFFO, isn't it? Yes, yes it is. "Extremely sensational," says merriam-webster.com. But BOFF ... BOFF is a verb, and, uh, not a verb you'd expect to see in the NYTXW.

The informal term is BOFF*O* and BOFF is vulgar slang. Maybe somebody sipping SANKA while reading Alfred NOYES and tsking "THAT'S A SHAME" calls a Broadway hit a BOFF, but that answer feels like insular, musty slang. The old-fashioned AURA kept creeping back into this puzzle. I think it's an editorial oldness, like the frame of reference for the clues is super-familiar and 20th-century. High-risk bonds and minor poets and quaint slang and twee French phrases and the like. In short, "youthful" answers like FAN SITES and UBERED and TMZ and POPO are fooling no one. I very much liked SCOOCH OVER (though spelling SCOOCH was an adventure), and ROLEPLAY and BODYSHOT are just fine, but most of the rest of it was without snap crackle or pop. The construction is solid enough, I guess, but the whole frame of reference, in the fill and particularly in the cluing, just felt ... unfresh. Tippi HEDREN, DANNY OCEAN and "ZELIG"—they're all fine, but with no modern cultural counterbalance, they really anchor this grid in the long-ago and the far-away. The EPIGRAMS of Martial and the [Ancient Greek birthplace of Parmenides] aren't helping. The bar is high on Fridays, and this one just didn't clear it. Not enough delight.

I posted my hand-filled grid today so you could be reminded of my terrible handwriting and so that you could see both my annotations and my hesitations. For instance, if you look closely, you can see where I wanted 5D: "C'mon, tell me!" to be SPILL ... something (it's "SPIT IT OUT"), and also where I wanted THEN to be THUS (39D: "And so ..."). Erasures are a map back in time, traces of your solving path and your struggle. The immaculate, software-smooth final grid is fine for public consumption, but there is this way that it hides yourself from yourself. Look up your errors, ye mighty, and despair! Also, if I'm solving in pencil, I can make my puzzle annotations in real time. For instance, that "UGH" pointing to NOYES is very authentic. Could not wait til I was done to write that bit of marginalia in there. Also, you can see how I wrote an "ugh" out of frustration and then changed it to "OK" after I got the actual answer at 41A: "Too bad" (THAT'S A SHAME). I had "THAT'S ..." and it seemed like infinity things could follow, so I wrote an annoyed "ugh" in the margin. But later I had to admit that that was just a frustration ugh and not a "this is genuinely terrible" ugh. As much as software-solving makes my life easier, there's something to be said about the personality-revealing aspects of hand-solving.

The thing that actually made me write profanity in the margins, though (not pictured), is the clue on TENURED (42D: Hard to let go of, in a way). There's something about living through a crisis in which teachers are being denigrated and demeaned, in which huge swaths of the public want to use teachers as lab rats in a return-to-school experiment, in which the OPED PAGE contains condescending calls for teachers to "do their jobs" in the fall, as if "subject yourself to disease and death" were in the job description, as if most teachers weren't actually working twice as hard to figure out how to "do their jobs," as well as *take care* of their students emotionally (which is work nobody talks enough about), yes, there's something about being alive now and being married to a teacher now that makes me not want any part of your cutesy-clued fantasy of firing teachers. Oh, are TENURED teachers "hard to let go"? Are they? THAT'S A SHAME. Hey, you want to know who's *really* "hard to let go," let's talk about the editor of the NYTXW. I mean, if we're being honest. In short, tax billionaires, feed / educate / love children, vote for competent leadership, and STFU. Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. an EASTER EGG is a hidden / bonus feature on a DVD / Blu-Ray, in my experience, though the term might apply elsewhere (35D: Bonus feature, of a sort)

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Constructor: Brooke Husic and Sid Sivakumar

Relative difficulty: Medium (around 8 min.)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: EVIE Sands (49A: Singer/songwriter) —

Evie Sands (born July 18, 1946) is an American singer, songwriter and musician.
Sands' music career spans more than 50 years. She began her career as a teenager in the mid-1960s. After a rocky start, she eventually found chart success in 1969, before retiring from performing in 1979 to concentrate on writing and production. She experienced a fashionable, UK-led surge in cult popularity beginning in the 1990s and returned to live performance in mid-1998. Sands continues to write and perform. [...]
In 1969 Sands finally scored with the A&M single "Any Way That You Want Me", a Chip Taylor composition previously recorded by both the American Breed and the Troggs in 1966. A No. 1 hit in Birmingham, Alabama, Sands'"Any Way That You Want Me" also reached the top ten or better in Columbus, Ohio; Houston, Texas; San Diego, California; and a number of other cities. The record reached No. 53 on the Hot 100and tied with Don Ho's "Tiny Bubbles" for most weeks (17) on that chart in the 1960s with a sub-50 peak. (wikipedia)

• • •

Before I get to what I liked about this puzzle (a lot), I gotta start with the one big Don't Like, and that is the answer MODEL MINORITY and *especially* its clue, 21A: Demographic myth often used with respect to Asian Americans. Let's be crystal clear here: the idea of a MODEL MINORITY is racist. Racist. That word is crucial here. "Demographic myth" sounds like some generic concept of how humans behave, but the idea of a MODEL MINORITY isn't just racist against Asian Americans, it's used as a super duper racist cudgel against Black and Hispanic Americans in particular. I have a hard time imagining what kind of "demographic myths" the crossword might accept about, I don't know, Jews, or Black people. The fact that MODEL MINORITYsounds nice should not exonerate it or allow it to pass as something other than the outright racist concept that it is. "Demographic myth," man, I almost literally choked on that little euphemism. Call racism racism, please and thank you.

OK, the rest of the puzzle! It was very entertaining—definitely out of my, uh, demographic at times ("CAT DOG" missed me, and MEGYN whoever on whatever "Rules of Engagement" is, also not on my radar), but only lightly so. I have no problem with proper nouns beyond my ken and out of me demo if the puzzle is well balanced overall, and the crosses on said proper nouns are fair. The REPORTS part of UFO REPORTS felt a little weak to me, somehow, but I cannot argue with PAYTOILET, SOFTPEDAL, BEERRUNS and especially POTDISPENSARY. I live in the state of New York where pot is not currently legal, so visiting my sister in Colorado last year was a *trip*. Dispensaries everywhere. It wasn't so much alarming as it was kinda sad. Just total saturation. Even when we were way out in nowhere SW Colorado, just as we were heading to the New Mexico border, near some lonely off-ramp next to some generic gas station ... bam! Dispensary! I guess you gotta load up on your pot and edibles and what not before heading back into joyless New Mexico, I don't know. Anyway, good answer, I say. I also weirdly like GOOUT. Solid and fresh, which is not something I normally have occasion to say about a five-letter entry.

Bullets:

15D: Film ___ (NOIR)— my baby! my precious! the genre of my soul. I was like "this *better* be NOIR" and it was, hurrah. Really helped me out up there in the NE.
22D: It has four bases (DNA)— Had "RNA" ha ha I am dumb at science. The best part about that error was ending up with MOREL MINORITY ... and thinking "... do they mean MORAL? But ... no, that's definitely an "E" so ... what are the "demographic myths" about Asian Americans and mushrooms? I am *so* confused..."
51D: Zoom call option (MUTE)— I very much relate to this clue and answer. Very much.
46D: Throw out (EVICT) — Had E---T. Wrote in EJECT. Nope. Thought maybe EGEST. Nope.
10D: Big name in luxury handbags (FENDI)— wrote in PRADA and immediately thought "but what if it's FENDI!?" Please clap for my knowledge of luxury handbags.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. a little birdie (actually just my friend Rachel) told me that *both* of today's constructors will have puzzles (individually) in next weekend's Lollapuzzoola crossword tournament, which is entirely online, and which you should very much participate in. This is a tournament that puts a premium on fun, so if you're at all tournament-curious, this is literally the easiest way to dip your toe in that world. You don't even have to leave your home! You can even enter the "Next Day" division, which allows you to solve all the puzzles without any time pressure whatsoever. More info here.

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Constructor: Ruth Bloomfield Margolin

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (a shade under 10 min.)

THEME: "Craft Show" — you draw on your puzzle at the end and make a kind of boat. The revealer and its clue explain: 66A: In perfect order ... or, as two words, what's formed by applying the answers for the five starred clues to the circled letters (SHIPSHAPE) (so ... you make a ship shape ... based on the shapes described in the ...

Theme answers:

LOVE TRIANGLE (36D: *Rick, Ilsa and Victor had one in "Casablanca")
SECURITY LINE (35D: *Airport logjam)
STORY ARC (84A: *Multi-episode narrative)
TOWN SQUARE (113A: *Civic center)
SKI SLOPE (48A: *Winter vacation destination)

Word of the Day: ST. PIERRE (53D: French island off the coast of Newfoundland) —

Saint Pierre and Miquelon, officially the Overseas Collectivity of Saint Pierre and Miquelon (French: Collectivité d'outre-mer de Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, IPA: [sɛ̃.pjɛʁ.e.mi.klɔ̃]), is a self-governing territorial overseas collectivity of France, situated in the northwestern Atlantic Ocean near the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It is the only part of New France that remains under French control, with an area of 242 square kilometres (93 sq mi) and a population of 6,008 [ed: !!!?!?!?] at the March 2016 census.
The islands are situated in the Gulf of St. Lawrence near the entrance of Fortune Bay, which extends into the southwestern coast of Newfoundland, near the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. They are 25 kilometres (16 mi) from the Burin Peninsula of Newfoundland and 3,819 kilometres (2,373 mi) from Brest, the nearest city in Metropolitan France. (wikipedia)

• • •

Whole lotta mixed feelings about this one. Nice to (finally) see a solo female constructor after more than two weeks without one. And this is conceptually ... well, interesting, at least. You draw a ship on the finished puzzle, and I can tell you I have *definitely* been asked to do that with a Sunday puzzle before (I feel like it was a puzzle about a painting that had been hung "upside-down" in some gallery for a long time and nobody noticed? Does that sound familiar? I may be conflating that puzzle with an entirely different draw-a-ship puzzle—I've been doing this for almost fourteen years ... there've been a lot of puzzles). But you build the puzzles out of shapes, and the themers describe both the shape and the letters you need to connect to make that shape: that is definitely clever. Whether I enjoyed the solving and (esp) the drawing, that's another question, and the answer to that question is an extremely equivocal, "I've definitely had worse times on a Sunday than I had today." The grid has a slightly oldish feel and the fill creaks a bit in places. And yet, honestly, it was probably smoother and more solid than most of the Sunday puzzles of late. The SW corner gets very very rough, but that's also the most thematically dense portion of the grid, with a whole bunch of circled squares crammed into a very tight area, so the roughness is at least explainable. I have never enjoyed puzzles that asked me to treat the finished grid like a child's placemat at IHOP, connecting dots and drawing pictures and what not, but if that sort of thing is your sort of thing, I don't know how you dislike this puzzle. It's ambitious and interesting. It's not for *me*, but it's not bad.

The main issue for me, from a satisfaction standpoint, is that I literally have no idea what two of these ship shapes do. Is the TOWN SQUARE some kind of ... tiller, is it? (nope, it's the rudder ... to my very very small credit, the tiller does control the rudder). And the SKI SLOPE is like ... some kind of narwhal unicorn dealie? Ooh, a bowsprit, is it a bowsprit!? [checks internet] Hoooooooly ****, it is! Ha ha, I'm nautical now, mateys!

It's weird how I know things that I don't know I know.

I had lots of trouble in precisely two sections of this grid: the aforementioned SW (with its NWT and OHI and TNOTE and plural ANTICS with a singular-looking clue) and then the NW, which was where I started, to very little avail. I had AROAR and ERS and that is it. The clue on NOODLE was completely inscrutable to me, to the bitter end, and ADDL had me ... that's right, addled. I figured [Not incl.] was EXCL. though I also figured that was far too stupid to be plausible. I imagined the coast after a storm would be strewn with driftwood and other detritus, not ERODED. I just whiffed the whole thing and had to back into it later, and even then, that NOODLE answer had me sweating til the very last letter. Other parts of the grid caused pain (SMIT!? LOL wha?) but not the kind associated with real difficulty. I had TIMESUCK before TIMESINK (52D: Endless YouTube viewing, e.g.), SCANTY before SKIMPY (63A: Meager), MOSTLY before MAINLY (119A: By and large), and could not process the silverback gorilla clue at all ("why ... is the answer ALOHA?). That's it, that's the whole experience.

Your final reminder: Lollapuzzoola is one of the best crossword tournaments in the country, is entirely online this year, and it takes place THIS SATURDAY (Aug. 15) from 1pm-7pm. There are lots of different ways to compete, or just get the puzzles and solve in a leisurely fashion at home. All the details are here. Highly recommended.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Lynn Lempel

Relative difficulty: Medium (3-ish)

THEME: KEYS (56D: Typically lost items that are "found" in the starts of 16-, 24-, 45- and 57-Across— first words of themers all have, or are associated with, KEYS:

Theme answers:

ORGAN DONOR (16A: Designation on many a driver's license)
FLORIDA ROOM (24A: Bright, sunny area of a house)
ATLAS ROCKET (45A: Launch vehicle for many NASA missions)
LOCK OF HAIR (57A: Ringlet on a salon floor)

Word of the Day: FLORIDA ROOM (24A) —

(US, Canada, especially East Coast US and Florida) A room within or adjoining a residence which is designed to admit considerable sunlight and fresh air, especially one which is not heated and is used only in the warmer seasons; a sunroom. (wikitionary)

• • •

Found this one actually slightly harder than your typical Monday puzzle, largely because none of the themers were obvious to me. Needed many crosses for all of them, even the hair, one (had OF HAIR, still wasn't sure what came first). Nothing in the ORGAN DONOR clue is very specific (lots of data on a driver's license). I think this may be the first time I've heard the term FLORIDA ROOM (though I did guess FLORIDA off just the -DA, so maybe it was in my brain somewhere). Don't pay very close attention to NASA missions so ___ ROCKET wasn't getting me anywhere either. I think the main problem was I backed into so many of these themers. Some kind of ROOM, some kind of ROCKET, something OF HAIR—that's what I encountered the first time I laid eyes on each of the last three themers. Just made things slower going than usual. Also found TROIKAS slightly hard to come up with (after TRIADS my brain blanked on other [Groups of three]). Same with PRAY DO (wow, "quaintly" is right, yikes) (35D: "Yes, proceed!," quaintly), and even BABY BONNET just wasn't coming quickly for me—even after I got the BABY part. What year is it that we're putting "wee ones" in "bonnets"? I think babies just wear sun hats now. Or ... we're just not putting babies in the sun, I don't know. I don't think Ella ever wore a bonnet. So ... Add in the inevitable hesitaiton created by 10D: Oodles (today, A LOT, some other day, A TON) and the fact that I had RAVING before RAHRAH (32A: Uncritically enthusiastic, colloquially), and you (I) have a solving time slightly north of average. That said, it's Monday, and it was easy.

As for quality, I'm not too RAHRAH about the reveals, which is just KEYS and thus kind of a pfft. I see how they try to get cute with the whole lose your keys / "find" your keys conceit in the clue, but the lack of a good revealer makes plain old KEYS kind of sad. These are the days I wish the NYTXW had *titles* like the WSJ and Newsweek and most indies. A good title obviates the need for a revealer (if there's not hot revealer to be had). But sure, those first themer words are all things associated with KEYS. It's a good set, but FLORIDA ROOM clunks a bit, mostly because it's the only themer where that first word isn't completely reimagined by KEYS—that is, KEYS takes the organ from body organ to musical instrument organ, and takes Atlas from god ATLAS (I assume that's the basis of the rocket's name) to map atlas, and takes LOCK from hair unit to security item. But FLORIDA ROOM ... I assume tthe room is named after the state, and the KEYS are in the state, so there's no real redirection. FLORIDA is FLORIDA is FLORIDA. Plus I just don't know the term, so I'm already not inclined to *love* it. But mostly my problem is with the "Meaning Not Reimagined" part. The grid seems average. Old-fashioned, but clean enough, fine enough. Enough.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Amanda Rafkin and Ross Trudeau

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (3:30)

THEME: EIEIO (37A: Refrain in a children's song ... or a literal feature of 17-, 25-, 42- and 55-Across)— EIEIO => the vowels (in order of appearance) in each of the themers:

Theme answers:

DERRINGER PISTOL (17A: Popular shooter in the Old West)
REWRITES HISTORY (25A: Puts one's own slant on the past)
PRESIDENT WILSON (42A: W.W. I leader)
VERMICELLI BOWLS (55A: Vietnamese noodle salads)

Word of the Day: ROLLO (31D: Viking who was the first ruler of Normandy) —

Rollo (Norman: Rou; Old Norse: Hrólfr; French: Rollon; c. 860 – c. 930 AD) was a Viking who became the first ruler of Normandy, a region in northern France. He emerged as the outstanding warrior among the Norsemen who had secured a permanent foothold on Frankish soil in the valley of the lower Seine. After the Siege of Chartres in 911, Charles the Simple, the king of West Francia, ceded them lands between the mouth of the Seine and what is now Rouen in exchange for Rollo agreeing to end his brigandage, and provide the Franks with protection against future Viking raids.
Rollo is first recorded as the leader of these Viking settlers in a charter of 918, and he continued to reign over the region of Normandy until at least 928. He was succeeded by his son William Longsword in the Duchy of Normandy that he had founded. The offspring of Rollo and his followers became known as the Normans. After the Norman conquest of England and their conquest of southern Italy and Sicily over the following two centuries, their descendants came to rule Norman England (the House of Normandy), much of the island of Ireland, the Kingdom of Sicily(the Kings of Sicily) as well as the Principality of Antioch from the 10th to 12th century, leaving behind an enduring legacy in the histories of Europe and the Near East. (wikipedia)

• • •

I can't say I find this quirk that interesting. Nice that they're all 15; that adds at least a little bit of architectural elegance to the thing. But the answers themselves aren't that interesting in their own right, and the fill is pretty tepid, with one of the longer Downs absolutely wasted on the bizarre legalese / partial WHEREFORES. Makes BATH TOWELS almost seem sparkly by comparison. Almost. Just seems like a "huh, interesting" kind of concept, without any grid oomph to make the whole experience more, I don't know, energizing and engaging. I actually do like VERMICELLI BOWLS as a stand-alone answer, but it's offset by DERRINGER PISTOL, which ... those are just called "derringers." It's not that DERRINGER PISTOL is wrong, it just feels oddly formal and slightly redundant. Thankfully, I never saw the clue and didn't have to think about it too much; I had drilled so many of the Down crosses into place that most of DERRINGER PISTOL was in place before I ever even looked at it.

Felt pretty easy overall, though ROLLO really slowed me down. Despite being very aware of the Normans and the Norman Invasion and the post-Invasion effects on England, I never learned the story of Normandy's origins well enough to keep ROLLO in cold storage for when I needed him. Reading about him, I realize that I have indeed read about him before, but it just didn't stick. His name, specifically, didn't stick. There is only one ROLLO for me, and he lives in the "Nancy" universe:

I had DOLT for TWIT (52D: Nincompoop), but no other missteps, though the SW corner was awkward and sloggy in a way that made me doubt I had it all in order. AYS!?! (61A: Captains' cries). I don't think I get it. The only nautical cry I know is AYE with an "E"—what is this "E"-less AY? That whole corner could use redoing, though honestly it's only AYS that's beyond the pale. I'm actually stunned at how often this answer has appeared in the NYTXW. OK, not often, about once a year. No, on second thought, that *is* too often. None of the really good constructors will touch it. Delete delete delete. Thank you.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Constructor: Adesina Koiki

Relative difficulty: Easy (very: faster than yesterday, almost as fast as Monday) (3:11)

THEME: OHIO PLAYERS (60A: Chart-topping 1970s R&B/funk band suggested by the starts of 17-, 26-, 39- and 50-Across)— first word of each themer is also the name of an individual PLAYER on a sports team based in OHIO:

Theme answers:

BENGAL TIGER (17A: Animal accompanying Pi in "Life of Pi") (Cincinnati Bengals) (NFL
BROWN BETTY (26A: Cousin of an apple cobbler) (Cleveland Browns) (NFL)
RED WHITE AND BLUE (39A: U.S. flag, with "the") (Cincinnati Reds) (MLB)
INDIAN FOOD (50A: Biryani or vindaloo) (Cleveland Baseball Team) (MLB)

Word of the Day: Dr. KILDARE (48A: "Dr." of 1960s TV) —

Dr. Kildare is an NBC medical drama television series which originally ran from September 28, 1961, until August 30, 1966 for a total of 191 episodes over five seasons Produced by MGM Television, it was based on fictional doctor characters originally created by author Max Brand in the 1930s and previously used by MGM in a popular film series and radio drama. The TV series quickly achieved success and made a star of Richard Chamberlain, who played the title role. Dr. Kildare(along with an ABC medical drama, Ben Casey, which premiered at the same time) inspired or influenced many later TV shows dealing with the medical field.
Dr. Kildare aired on NBC affiliate stations on Thursday nights at 8:30-9:30 PM from September 28, 1961 until September 1965, when the timeslot was changed to Monday and Tuesday nights at 8:30-9:00 PM until the end of the show's run on August 30, 1966. (wikipedia)

• • •

Ha ha ha, yesssss! I opened the puzzle, saw my friend's name, had a brief feeling of elation, then immediately thought, "Oh, c'mon, please be good...." And it was! There was a bit of creaky fill along the way, but that revealer really sealed the day. Rollercoaster!

This puzzle also had SUN RA (37D: Jazz great with an Egyptian-sounding name) and SHAFT (11D: Iconic blaxploitation film), so I was very much digging the vibe from start to finish. Seeing Addy's name was just such a nice surprise, and I need all the nice surprises I can get right now, to be honest. I've known Addy for something like a decade. I must've met him at an ACPT a while back but he's definitely been a regular at Lollapuzzoola in NYC every August*, and that's where I see him most often. Here we are at Yankee Stadium in 2013:

It's just nice to see a familiar face pop up in the constructor byline totally unexpectedly. It's also nice (very nice) to absolutely crush a Wednesday puzzle like it was Monday. I honestly thought I was gonna break three minutes. I don't remember hitting any real snags or slowdowns. All the proper nouns were in my wheelhouse and none of the fill was that weird or jarring or difficultly clued. I misspelled AHH, LOL. There really should be some kind of standard for the two-A and the two-H varieties! I also briefly thought WHOA was "WHAA...?" (27D: "What just happened where ... ?!"). I resented having to stop to figure out a dad joke, but it is *such* a dad joke that I actually laughed (51D: "What do you call cheese that isn't yours? ___ cheese!" (dad joke)). I've written down SHA ITE ADES AHH AMAIN OSOLE and INGE as Fill I Could Do Without, but honestly that is a pretty short list. Anyway, this puzzle is all about the theme, and specifically the Perfection of the revealer. Fiiie-uh!

So, yes, full disclosure, grain of salt, the constructor is my friend, I like him, I'm happy he has his debut today. I also genuinely enjoyed the solve. Have a nice day!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*Lollapuzzoola is all-online this year, and it's This Saturday. I've told you this many times, but I'm telling you again, just in case you missed it. More info here!

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Jon Olsen

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (5:42)

THEME: THREE MUSKETEERS (57A: Group whose motto is a hint to this puzzle's theme)— "All for one and one for all—letter strings "ONE" and "ALL" are swapped inside all the themers, resulting in, well, gibberish:

Theme answers:

FONEINGROCKZALL (i.e. falling rock zone) (17A: Sign on a mountain roadway)
RHALLVONEEY (i.e. Rhine Valley) (22A: Famed French wine region)
PHALLCONE (i.e. phone call) (35A: Dinnertime annoyance)
SLY STONEALL (i.e. Sly Stallone) (51A: Actor with a "Rocky" performance, familiarly)

Word of the Day: bird's nest soup (32D: What the nests in bird's-nest soup are made of => SPIT) —

Edible bird's nests are bird nests created by edible-nest swiftlets, Indian swiftlets, and other swiftlets using solidified saliva, which are harvested for human consumption. They are particularly prized in Chinese culture due to their rarity, high nutritional value in nutrients such as protein, and rich flavor. Edible bird's nests are among the most expensive animal products consumed by humans, with nests being sold at prices up to about $3,000 per pound ($6,600/kg), depending on grading. The type or grading of a bird's nest depends on the type of bird as well as the shape and color of the bird's nest. It is usually white in color, but there also exists a red version that is sometimes called "blood" nest. According to traditional Chinese medicine, it promotes good health, especially for the skin. The nests have been used in Chinese cuisine for over 400 years, most often as bird's nest soup. (emph. mine) (wikipedia)

• • •

When I was done, all I could think about was SPIT, and about how sad that was. SPIT. As a piece of land or a slender rod for roasting meat, I don't mind the word, but as a rough synonym for "saliva," I find it gross, mostly because it evokes the (human) activity of spitting. You can keep your SPIT out of my puzzles, thanks. But the presence of SPIT here was made so so so much worse by the really weird and misleading clue. I have to believe that the term for what the nests are made of is "saliva."SPIT is a slangy word associated with humans. The idea that birds make their nests with SPIT seems ... odd. I will admit that I had no idea that the nests were saliva-based and in fact I assumed that there was some other culinary thing called "bird's nest soup" involved here in which the "nests" were made of, say, vermicelli. I thought the answer was gonna be a more typical human food thing. I had SPI- and would not write in the last letter / assumed I had an error until the very, very end. I'm never going to believe that SPIT> saliva here. SPIT is an informal, grosser form of the word, and I can't see how it squares with this culinary / avian context. I wouldn't put SPIT in my grid at all, and if I did I would insist it be clued with one of its non-saliva meanings. There's an ick factor; and today, there's a weird anthropomorphization factor. This one answer completely blotted out the rest of the puzzle for me.

But I guess there was a theme and I should address it, however briefly. I see that the concept is very ... precise; I mean, all for one and one for all, yes, that is exactly what you are doing as you solve, so the concept is literal, I'll give it that. But just look at the grid. It's just nonsense. RHALLVONEEY is a thing that is in this grid. If you're going to do the thing, there should be a good reason and a pleasant result of some sort for doing the thing. Doing the thing just to do the thing gets you, well, this: flagrant non-wordness. What's more, once you grok the theme, the rest of the themers all of a sudden get way way way easier, because you know those circled squares are going to have ALL or ONE in them, so you can just fill them in with very little help from crosses, without even looking at the clue. Also, once you do look at the clue, you know that both ALL and ONE are in there somewhere. SLY STONEALL is I think supposed to be the cleverest of the bunch, but it's actually the worst, in the sense of "least wacky." SLY STONE is a real person, and now ALL I want to do is listen to his music rather than think about this puzzle anymore.

Further: Kevin SORBO is right-wing dipshit à la Chuck Woolery and Dean Cain and Scott Baio and James Woods and other has-been white-guy fuckwits of the entertainment world, so seeing his dumb ass in the grid wasn't any fun (34D: Kevin who played Hercules). I applied to Whittier (Nixon's alma mater!) when I was applying to college and had no idea they were the POETS (46A: Fitting nickname for athletes at Whittier College). That would not have been a selling point, even though I grew up to teach [checks notes] poetry. There was a big quake in Whittier my first year in college (I went to a different southern California college). No idea why you need to know that, but now you can figure out my exact age if you just do a little stalker-like googling. The "?" clues seem pretty straightforward, though big eyeroll for 13D: February 4th, for many? (SILENT R). There's no silent "R," there's just correct and incorrect pronunciation. Hate SAFARIS as a verb (1D: Travels à la Theodore Roosevelt in 1909-10). Had FICTION before FANTASY (3D: Bookstore section). Had no idea who RON Cephas Jones was. I barely watch network TV and don't care about the Emmys. If Rhea Seehorn has no Emmys (for playing attorney Kim Wexler on AMC's "Better Call Saul"), then the Emmys are clearly meaningless. Five seasons and she's Never Even Been Nominated, LOL, go to hell, Emmys.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Nam Jin Yoon

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (4:53)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Ashanti empire (45D: Modern-day home of the Ashanti empire => GHANA) —

The Asante Empire (Asante Twi: Asanteman) was an Akan empire and kingdom from 1701 to 1957, in what is now modern-day Ghana. [...] The Ashanti Empire fought several wars with neighboring kingdoms and lesser organized tribes such as the Fante. The Ashanti defeated the British Empire's invasions in the first two of the four Anglo-Ashanti Wars, killing and keeping British army general Sir Charles MacCarthy's skull as a gold-rimmed drinking cup in 1824. Due to British improvements in weapons technology, burning and looting of the capital Kumasi and final defeat at the fifth Anglo-Ashanti War, the Ashanti empire became part of the Gold Coast colony in January 1, 1902. // Today, the Ashanti Kingdom survives as a constitutionally protected, sub-national traditional state in union with the Republic of Ghana. The current king of the Ashanti Kingdom is Otumfuo Osei Tutu II Asantehene. The Ashanti Kingdom is the home to Lake Bosumtwi, Ghana's only natural lake. The state's current economic revenue is derived mainly from trading in gold bars, cocoa, kola nuts and agriculture. (wikipedia)

• • •

As with Wednesday's puzzle, I destroyed it and I very much enjoyed destroying it. Did not start out so great, though. Forgot KAFKA wrote "A Hunger Artist," ugh. Also read "Network" instead of "Noted work" at beginning of 1A: Noted work in which many different positions are discussed (KAMA SUTRA). Seems like if my memory and reading capabilities had been functioning satisfactorily, I could've really flown through this thing. Instead, I relied on three of my favorite things, yoga (ASANAS) and coffee (FLATWHITE) and poetry (Rita DOVE) to (eventually) bail me out ... oh, and KATE McKinnon, I knew her too. Thought for sure I'd get the "Othello" clue straight off, but the generic ATTENDANT never occurred to me (not before I got the ATTEN- part, anyway) (4D: Emilia vis-à-vis Desdemona, in "Othello"). Wrote a paper my senior year on Emilia—fat lot of good it did me! Anyway, after the flailing in the NW, I escaped via the lovely LAWYER UP (!), and wow did things speed up after that. Terminal "U" made NEHRU a cinch, and then whoooosh, there went the NE. I feel like I know the term GROUPCHAT from my daughter, but now that I think about it, it's not especially youth-y—but it is fresh, and one of my favorite answers of the day.

[Erik SATIE, Gymnopédies 3]

Took PREGGO right into the SE, where CHOU and GHANA were gimmes and so there went that corner. Then went up and swung back through the center quite easily thanks to some more of my favorite things (mushrooms, GINS). Finally came at the SW corner from both sides (the north, the east), and despite some floundering around the DAFT / DAB / ALE, I made pretty short work of it all. Ended on the "B" in DAB. Clue on ALE didn't make sense to me—I raise a glass *for* ALE?? (40A: Something to raise a glass for). But I guess if you have already had a pint and you want to signal to the bartender that you want another, sure, at that point, you might raise your glass to indicate that you wanted another ALE. Or maybe you're just raising it to your face so that you can drink it, I dunno. What matters is I came in under 5, and that the puzzle featured many an EYE-OPENER and (more importantly) was never awful.

[Black Box, "Open Your Eyes"]

FLAT WHITEs are "similar" to lattes, it's true, but somehow also infinitely superior. They were not a thing here until fairly recently. We drank them constantly in NZ, which has a bizarrely advanced coffee culture. I don't think I've ever heard a NE-YO song, even though his name is now as familiar to me as ENYA's (I exaggerate, but not a lot) (50D: "So Sick" hitmaker of 2006). I don't think I've ever been less attuned to popular music than I was in the 00s, i.e. the first decade of my job and the first decade of my daughter's life. Big blank spot in my knowledge. Then things start to come back online a little around 2011. But "SHOOP" ... "SHOOP" I was around for.

[Salt-N-Pepa, "Shoop"]

Nice Nirvana reference in the ANGST clue (10A: Teen spirit, perhaps). No good mistakes today, though I did write in ALERO (LOL) instead of MIATA at 3D: Chicago Auto Show debut of 1989. Gonna go listen to some SATIE now because "Gymnopédies" is soooothing and I need to wind down before bed. Hope you all enjoyed this puzzle as much as I did. No weak spots. Bouncy and fresh. Totally crushable. Everything a Friday should be. And I'm pretty sure it's a debut! Nice. See you later.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Joe DiPietro

Relative difficulty: Challenging (I was too tired to start a Saturday, should've just done it in the morning)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: NAT Sherman cigars (51A) —

Nat Sherman is the brand name for a line of handmade cigars and "luxury cigarettes." The company, which began as a retail tobacconist, continues to operate a flagship retail shop now located on 42nd Street, off Fifth Avenue, in New York City. Corporate offices are now located at the foot of the George Washington Bridge in Fort Lee, New Jersey. [...] Sherman advertised during New York Giants radio broadcasts. Every major play during the game, Giants commentator Bob Papa exclaimed "Get that man a Nat Sherman cigar!". / Slang terminology for a PCP-laced tobacco cigarette is a "sherm" or "sherman", named for the brand.

• • •

Sometimes trying to write this blog in the 10pm to 7am window just ... doesn't quite work out. I get too tired too early, fall asleep on the couch, wake up in a kind of no man's land, and have to decide, "OK, solve and blog now, or set the alarm for 4am and solve and blog then?" I was fully prepared to go with the latter, but after I'd brushed my teeth I thought, "well, I'm up, let's just do this." Tonight, that was Not the right call. I haven't been this off a puzzle's wavelength in a long time, and I just found almost every part of this solve grueling and unpleasant. It was especially unpleasant because except for the center, the grid looks like a Monday or Tuesday grid—lots of black squares, lots of short stuff. And let me tell you, there is something particularly awful about having to wade through so much short stuff that is clued at nth-degree difficulty. I'll take my difficulty almost any other way, but, like, brutal clues on crap like MSG and GLO and (ugh) SIDE A, you can shove all of that. The SW was pretty tractable, but the rest, oof. I kept stopping, which is not something I normally do during a solve. The center stack actually looks OK, but who in the world is going to be excited by techno-corporate garbage like ADCLICKRATE and SALES and AOL ("pioneer"?) and ETRADE even OPEN A NEW TAB. Did a sales algorithm with a LA QUINTA loyalty card write this puzzle? And speaking of OPEN A NEW TAB ... and GET A SHOCK, and MADE A NEST ... again, oof. Big "ATE A SANDWICH" energy. Indefinite article abuse. This was just SOUR NOTE after SOUR NOTE, but the main issues were: too much short stuff (so, lots of fussy difficulty for zero payoff) and too much stultifying fill. Again, those three longer Across answers in the middle are nice. But man I did not enjoy myself one bit with this one.

Also unpleasant—how reliant I was on crosswordese just to get a toehold in this thing. First things I wrote in were stuff like NCR and OREM and ODE and DOER. Had THAT (at 8D) and no idea about the rest (THAT IS SICK). Had GET (at 9D) and no idea about the rest (GET A SHOCK). So moving between parts of the grid ... I just got repeatedly stymied by what ultimately seemed like pretty arbitrary phrases (you'd probably say "THAT'S SICK," honestly, and again, the whole "A" in the middle of so many phrases (like GET A SHOCK) just kept making me shake my head.

Here are some Selected Problems:

Problems (selected):

SIDEA (2D: Finer cut, usually) — "Finer cut" is ugh. No. It's the radio-friendly cut, perhaps, but that doesn't make it finer. Just horrible misdirection.
RITA (14A: Romance novelist's award) — probably seen this before, but ... blank. At one point wanted EDNA
ARABS (1D: About 5% of the world's population) — if you say so. Totally random. No life in the clue at all. Horrid.
BEHESTS (20A: Commands)— archaic / formal / almost never seen outside of a prepositional "at" phrase ... no idea. Had INSISTS.
ARKS (6D: Asylums)— first, it's asyla, and second, I barely know what this means. Ah, I see the third def. is "place or thing furnishing protection; refuge"; this feels about as in-the-language as plural BEHESTS
ARCHER (15A: One taking a bow) — I had ANCHOR. . . because ... "bow" is nautical, maybe? I don't know. Again, I'm very tired.
CAN'T GO (5A: Terse invitation to an invitation) — weirdly equivocated over that "G," thinking it might be a "D" (I mean, if CAN DO is a thing...)
MSG / GLO / AOL — just a rough ugly corner, that NE. Because of the quot. marks, I had "No MAS"; no idea what these alleged "1980s toys" are .... GLO Worms, you say? I had SNO Worms at one point
DUO (19A: Smallest possible band) — well this is a lie. I direct your attention to the phrase "one-man band."
NAT (51D: ___ Sherman cigars) — no idea none zero. Cigars ... LOL yep if you wanted a topic farthest from me, that's the one. Just no hope here.
LINEN (40D: Scrim material)— by this point, I disliked the puzzle so much that my brain kind of shut off. It was all I could do to put together Any kind of "material" from the letters I got from crosses. Sure, LINEN totally makes me think of "scrims" and vice versa, awesome. Whatever.
ROLLS UP TO (32D: Arrives at in a vehicle) — I had PULLS UP TO, though as errors go that one was not bad; easily fixable
LANA (25A: One of the film-directing Wachowskis) — I wanted MIRA, why? Is the other one MIRA??? Dammit, it's Lilly. Where the hell did MIRA come from?
CEE (33D: Artichoke heart?) — this was the worst. Saw right through it ... but in the wrong way. I wrote in ICH. You see. You see how that works, right? That's *at least* as "good" as (ugh) CEE.

Good riddance.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Francis Heaney

Relative difficulty: Easy (7:55)

THEME:"Alternative Cinema"— Movies are clued as "Alternative titles" for other movies; they're "alternatives" because their titles make them sound like their titles are about the same thing as the originals (even if, in every case, they are very much not):

Theme answers:

"TWELVE ANGRY MEN" (23A: Alternative title for "The Dirty Dozen")
"THE AFRICAN QUEEN" (33A: Alternative title for "Cleopatra")
"DOCTOR STRANGE" (51A: Alternative title for "Frankenstein")
"BYE BYE / BIRDIE" (68A: With 70-Across, alternative title for "To Kill a Mockingbird")
"WATERSHIP DOWN" (92A: Alternative title for "Titanic")
"THE LADY VANISHES" (106A: Alternative title for "Gone Girl")
"AMERICAN BEAUTY" (121A: Alternative title for "The Name of the Rose")

Word of the Day: SANRIO (94A: Hello Kitty company) —

Sanrio Co., Ltd. (株式会社サンリオ, Kabushikigaisha Sanrio) is a Japanese company that designs, licenses and produces products focusing on the kawaii (cute) segment of Japanese popular culture. Their products include stationery, school supplies, gifts and accessories that are sold worldwide and at specialty brand retail stores in Japan. Sanrio's best-known character is Hello Kitty, a little anthropomorphic cat girl, one of the most successful marketing brands in the world. (wikipedia)

• • •

The funniest thing about [Hello Kitty company] is remembering how Will once told a veteran constructor that HELLO KITTY was not well enough known to be in the NYTXW ... (!) ... and now it's so obviously well known that we're apparently supposed to know the parent company!? Wow. Tables, turned. I will say that the SANRIO / LAILA crossing was one of the only weak spots in this puzzle, in that lots and lots of people won't know SANRIO, and it's totally plausible that even if you know LAILA Ali you will misspell her name LAYLA. So ... SANRYO? Did anyone make that error? You can say "well SANRYO just looks wrong" but I would then direct your attention to the company name SANYO, which is just one letter shy of SANRYO. I just think that is a potential Natick for people (non-universally-known proper nouns crossing at a hard-to-guess vowel). Might mess some people up, which would be a shame, because I found this puzzle clever and delightful. How often do I say that about Sunday puzzles? (It's a rhetorical question! We all know the answer is "almost never"). The theme ... works. And it's clever. And genuinely funny. (Outright LOL at "BYE BYE / BIRDIE"). I will say that (to me) "DOCTOR STRANGE" is a comics character and "WATERSHIP DOWN" is a novel, but there's no disputing the fact that both were movies, so fair enough. There were very few ugly moments. Just a clean, entertaining breeze.

If you didn't know SANRIO, well, I had a little taste of that bafflement at UNEEDA (!?!?!??!!), which had me feeling worried that I had an error. I mean, how would I know. UNEEDA cracker from this century (or at least last century) if you want me to have a shot at getting it. Just finished watching "The Office" in its entirety, so I've been staring at EDHELMS a lot of late. TWYLA SHARON MATSUI SMEE LOUIS was quite the proper name mash-up there in the lower center, but MATSUI's the only one I can see giving people real grief. ISSICK made me wince, the way ISDUMB or ISANYADJECTIVE might, and every letter of FINNEY was a mystery to me (34D: Charles ___, religious leader known as "The Father of Modern Revivalism"), but whatever issues I had were quickly overcome, and the bulk of the puzzle was very easy to move through. I could do without MOR and DIC (...!), but otherwise I can't fault the fill very much at all. Lots of great longer fill in the (non-theme) Downs too, which is always nice.

Congrats to Brian Cimmet and Patrick Blindauer, the organizers of the Lollapuzzoola crossword tournament, which took place online yesterday with something north of 1800 (!!) contestants. I didn't participate but I did get to catch the finals of both the Local (novice) and Express (advanced) divisions, which were both oddly *thrilling*. Congratulations especially to David Plotkin, who won the whole shebang.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. I used to watch a show called "Alphas." It was partially set in Binghamton. I watched it with my daughter, roughly a decade ago. I liked the show enough to buy a t-shirt. It looks like this:

Fast forward nine years, my daughter is now in college, and all my wife and I have to fill the void is an ornery but adorable kitten named Alfie.

On Friday, I got a package in the mail from my daughter. It contained this:

The one discolored toe bean in the exponent really put it over the top for me. That is a true-to-life detail. I'm either never going to wear this shirt (too precious) or I'm going to put it on and never take it off. Can't decide.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Alan Massengill and Andrea Carla Michaels

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (2:42)

THEME: BEACHFRONT (54A: Property along the ocean ... or a hint to the starts of 18-, 23-, 36- and 47-Across) — first words ("fronts") of themers are beach-related things:

Theme answers:

WAVES HELLO (18A: Greets from across the way, say)
SURF THE NET (23A: Casually browse online)
SHELLS OUT CASH (36A: Spends moolah)
PALMS CARDS (47A: Demonstrates some sleight of hand)

Word of the Day: SEGO lily (64A: ___ lily)—

Calochortus nuttallii — known as sego lily — is a bulbous perennial which is endemic to the Western United States.
It is the state flower of Utah. (wikipedia)

• • •

BEACHFRONT is a nice idea for a revealer, but WAVES and SURF are the same thing—why would you waste a themer on a redundancy like that? Why not something with "sand" or, uh, PIERS PLOWMAN or something? SURF THE NET has a definite old-timer vibe to it (see also BEETLEs, Beatles, and The LOVIN' Spoonful), but it's fine, and the other themers were also fine, as stand-alone answers. I have a quibble with the revealer clue, though: I have only ever (or, rather, I have overwhelmingly) heard BEACHFRONT used adjectivally. I mean, I looked it up, and I see that there is a noun version, but for some reason my ears really really want the word BEACHFRONT to modify "property." So I think the revealer clue would've been clearer / more on-the-nose if it had read [*Like* property along the ocean...]. Just [Property ...] feels off. I don't know how to prove that most people use BEACHFRONT (when they use it) adjectivally, but I feel certain this is true. Anyway, I'm not mad at the revealer clue, just registering how awkward it sounds to me when clued as a noun.

[Robyn, "Beach2k20"]

The bulk of the trouble I had with this puzzle came from trying to get the last two themers, actually. SHELLS OUT CASH is a little green-painty* as answers go, so the SHELLS OUT part took a bunch of crosses to become clear. And PALMS CARDS is a fine phrase, I guess, but the PALMS part still took many crosses to sort out. I also struggled with WALL ST. (1D: Financial ctr. in Manhattan). The abbr. ("ctr.") part threw me off. Got the WA- but thought there was some specific building in question. Didn't much care for that bank of 6-letter Downs at all. The fill in general is a little dull / creaky. ISDUE is not quite as off-putting as yesterday's ISSICK, but it's close. ONE-ARM (3D: Feature of a Las Vegas "bandit") and PET TRICKS (33D: "Stupid" segments on old David Letterman shows). I would love if they were inside their complete phrases. Standing alone, I think they're pretty bad, especially PET TRICKS, which is a partial *and* quite dated by now. Lotsa stale stuff like SEGO OSSA IDEST etc., but by 20th-century standards, it's pretty clean. Overall: nice theme idea, slightly clunkily executed, with tolerable overall fill. Shrug. Next.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*green paint = phrase one might say, but that doesn't feel strong enough to be a stand-alone answer

P.S. ONE-ARM bandits = slang for slot-machines, in case you somehow didn't know

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Constructor: Olivia Mitra Framke

Relative difficulty: Easy (2:51) (undersized grid, 14x15)

THEME: AMENDMENT XIX (53A: Measure fully ratified on 8/18/1920) — a puzzle celebrating the 100th anniversary of WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE in the U.S. (34A: Subject of 53-Across):

Additional theme answers:

ALICE PAUL (17A: Rights advocate who campaigned for 53-Across)
CONSTITUTION (19A: What 53-Across changed)
TENNESSEE (56A: 36th state to ratify 53-Across, resulting in its passage)

Word of the Day: ORANGINA (10D: Citrus drink often sold in a pear-shaped bottle) —

Orangina (French pronunciation: [ɔʁɑ̃ʒina]) is a lightly carbonated beverage made from carbonated water, 12% citrus juice (10% from concentrated orange, 2% from a combination of concentrated lemon, concentrated mandarin, and concentrated grapefruit juices), as well as 2% orange pulp. Orangina is sweetened with sugar or high fructose corn syrup (glucose fructose) and natural flavors are added.
Orangina was developed by Augustin Trigo Mirallès from Spain in 1933 and was sold to French businessman Léon Beton at a trade fair in Marseille in 1935. Today it is a popular beverage in Europe (especially France and Switzerland), Japan, North Africa, and to a lesser extent in North America.
Since November 2009, Orangina has been owned by Suntory in most of the world. In the United States, the brand has been owned by Keurig Dr Pepper (formerly the Dr Pepper Snapple Group) since 2006. In Canada, the brand is owned by Canada Dry Motts Inc. (wikipedia)

• • •

Hey, cool, an anniversary puzzle that actually appears exactly on the anniversary. And it's a milestone that's truly worthy of the tribute. No trickiness or gimmicks here, just straightforward trivia arranged in a symmetrical pattern, but it all works fine. Of course you'd normally refer to the "measure" in question today as the "nineteenth amendment," not AMENDMENT XIX, but the phrase as it appears in the grid is accurate, so I can't really ding it for its non-colloquial quality. Puzzle is undersized (narrow by one column) in order to accommodate the 14-letter central answer. I guess the constructor could've opted for the oversized 16x15 puzzle and stuck with the same answers just fine, but if you can do it in a 14 wide just as well, why not? You get a couple nice longer Downs in the bargain (ORANGINA, MUSTANGS). Actually, FOR KEEPS isn't bad either, and TOXINS and BOX SET both work nicely in the SE. I suppose those X's might've caused trouble, but with KOSOVO that actually ends up being the most interesting corner.

There's some less-than-lovely crosswordesey stuff (AMOI, OLES, OLAN) and a couple of weakish partials (ADEE, AKISS), and MNOP is ... yeah, not great; but this is a puzzle where all the fill really has to do is hang in there. Stay cleanish, let the attention go to the theme. Mission largely accomplished. Not much else to say.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Brandon Koppy

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (just over 5) (early a.m. solve)

THEME: LIFE / CYCLE (1D: With 41-Across, generational sequence)— the outer edge of the grid is populated by a "cycle" of 4-letter answers are clued as interlocking phrases, i.e. LIFE BOAT / BOAT SHOW / SHOW DOWN, etc. until the "cycle" ends up back at "LIFE" again (TIME/LIFE):

Theme answers:

LIFE BOAT (1A: With 5-Across, means of survival)
BOAT SHOW (5A: With 9-Across, place to yacht-shop)
SHOW DOWN (9A: With 16-Down, decisive confrontation)
DOWN PLAY (16D: With 39-Down, minimize)
PLAY DEAD (39D: With 62-Down, lie motionless)
DEAD HEAD (62D: With 71-Across, traveling music fan of old)
HEAD HOME (71A: With 70-Across, call it a night, say)
HOME GAME (70A: With 69-Across, advantage in sports)
GAME FACE (69A: With 50-Down, athlete's intense expression)
FACE TIME (50D: With 27-Down, Apple app)
TIME LIFE (27D: With 1-Down, company named for two magazines)

Word of the Day: Judd APATOW (22A: Judd who directed "Knocked Up") —

Judd Mann Apatow (/ˈæpətaʊ/; born December 6, 1967) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and comedian. He is the founder of Apatow Productions, through which he produced and directed the films The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005), Knocked Up (2007), Funny People (2009), This Is 40 (2012), Trainwreck (2015), and The King of Staten Island (2020).
Additionally through Apatow Pictures, he produced and developed the television series Freaks and Geeks (1999–2000), Undeclared (2001–2002), Funny or Die Presents (2010–2011), Girls (2012–2017), Love (2016–2018), and Crashing (2017–2019).
Apatow also produced the films The Cable Guy (1996), Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy(2004), Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006), Superbad (2007), Pineapple Express(2008), Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008), Get Him to the Greek (2010), Bridesmaids (2011), Begin Again (2013), Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues (2013), and The Big Sick (2017).
Throughout his career, Apatow received nominations for eleven Primetime Emmy Awards (two wins), five Writers Guild of America Awards (one win), two Producers Guild of America Awards, one Golden Globe Award, and one Grammy Award. (wikipedia)

• • •

All short stuff, all cross-referenced—you can guess how much I enjoyed this (A: not much). "With this-clue, With that-clue," over and over and over, backward and forward up and down. Annoying, fussy, disorienting, joyless. Not hard at all, but because of the look-here, look-there horrid heavy cross-referencing, it was time-consuming. With no payoff. When I got into those little corners, because two of the answers now were going to be cross-references, and one of those was going to force my attention *outside* the corner, things just got confusing. Not hard, again. Just, "wait, where am I looking again?" I have absolutely positively seen this kind of ring around the rosy theme before: the interlocking phrase thing, the perimeter thing, both very much done before. And again, the main issue is not the been-done quality of the theme, but the failure to satisfy at least one of two theme requirements: is there a really good payoff? Is it a joy to solve? If you get 'no' to both, then why are you making this? This feels like a child's placemat game that got turned into a puzzle, and no one thought to ask "why?" The CYCLE bit in the middle is interesting, especially the way it's linked back to the first word in the CYCLE, but it's not interesting enough. The theme is unsatisfying, and one of the results of the theme set-up is that the grid is choked with 3-to-5-letter fill (ABRA NEHI STENO etc.), which is also unsatisfying.

It's a shame the theme was a drag, because at least a couple of these long Downs deserve better. AMBIENT NOISE in particular is really very nice, as is EMAIL BLAST, though I didn't like the latter as much because the clue threw me and so I couldn't pick up the BLAST part until almost the last cross. I know EMAIL BLAST as a mass email ... I didn't know the "bcc" part was a definitive feature. When I see "bcc" I think of secretively looping someone in for one reason or another; I guess I don't think of it for, like, mass advertising purposes. Anyway, the "bcc" had me thinking regular work-type emails, so BLAST (which is about the *size* of the audience, not the audience's recipient status) just didn't enter my brain til very late. Still, it's a vibrant phrase. Thumbs up, for sure. I had trouble moving through the grid because of having EMAIL but no idea about BLAST, and then having BOSTON and having no idea about ACCENT. Again, a clue word threw me: "tested." Your accent would be "tested" if you had to say that phrase, not if you actually had to park the car in Harvard yard, and yes, I know, that is why the "?" is on the clue, but that's pretty tenuous.

Mistakes? A few. Ironically screwed up the blogging clue by writing in ESSAY instead of ENTRY off the "Y" (66A: Blog post). That SW corner was the toughest for me, because I forgot if the actress was FAY or FEY or oh it's FOY? Oh, I probably knew that, or should, since I've watched every episode of "The Crown." Anyway, I would've sorted it out faster but the stupid under-clued ORANG (51D: Rainforest dweller, for short), crossing one of those dumb cross-referenced themers, was getting in my way. Any other trouble? Oh, yes, a major, costly mistake right up top with 17A: Puma competitor (FILA). Sadly, the one letter I had in place when I looked at that clue was the "I" and so I wrote in NIKE. Bah. Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Grant Thackray

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging or Easy depending on if you looked at the revealer early or late (I looked late)

THEME: "A WRINKLE IN TIME" (59A: Classic young adult novel ... or hint to the path taken by four letters to the answers in the starred clues) — in order to make sense of the themers, you have to find the missing "IM," which is sitting directly above the "TE," so it's like the answer has sort of buckled, causing a "wrinkle" in the letter string "TIME":

Theme answers:

SENT(IM)ENTAL VALUE (16A: *An old wedding dress might have this)
"WHAT (I M)EANT WAS ..." (29A: *"Er ... um ...")
MORT(IM)ER MOUSE (45A: *Mickey's rival for Minnie's affection)

Word of the Day:"The L WORD: Generation Q," sequel starting in 2019 (26D) —

The L Word: Generation Q is an American drama television series produced by Showtimethat premiered on December 8, 2019. It is a sequel series to The L Word, which aired on Showtime from 2004 to 2009. A first-look screening took place on December 9, 2019, hosted by House of Pride, to coincide with the US release. In January 2020, Showtime renewed the series for a second season. // Generation Q is set over ten years after The L Word, in the new setting of Silver Lake, Los Angeles. Several actors from the original series returned to reprise their roles alongside a new ensemble of diverse characters. The show centers on a group of diverse LGBTQ+characters experiencing love, heartbreak, sex, setbacks, personal growth and success in Los Angeles.(wikipedia)

• • •

RThe concept is slightly clever but the actual experience of solving this puzzle was not great, largely because, once again, my grid is full of gibberish. It's a little better than other gibberish puzzles I've done in the past, in that at least I can actually *see* the missing "IM" at the end, once the revealer tells me what's going on, but still, the themers were all messed up in ways that made everything just a slog. Also, who the hell is MORT(IM)ER MOUSE? I cannot picture him at all. What a bizarre, obscure themer. But getting the letters in "MORTER" was actually much easier than getting the other two themers. I guess I resent the idea that if I'd done my puzzle backward, i.e. read the ending (the revealer) first, this puzzle would've been, what, 3 to 4 times easier. I'm making that up, but A WRINKLE IN TIME was practically a gimme, even with its generic [Classic young adult novel] clue, and then I could've focused on the letter string "TIME," and deciphering the themers would've been a snap. But instead I hacked to the end and while the revealer definitely gave me the "aha" moment you typically look for, the experience of working my way down there was so singularly unpleasant that it didn't matter. Payoff needed to be Much bigger to make up for the slog. And it wasn't just the theme experience that was annoying: the fill is really rough in lots of places, and that NE corner was really hard in a way that made it a huge, huge outlier.

Without knowing the themer gimmick, I didn't have SENT(IM)ENTAL VALUE, so in the NE I had PDA and DOILIES ... and I figured DOILIES would open things right up, buuuut ... nope. Had LIE for AIL (11D: Languish). Had LEK for LEU (Romanian currency, truly the lowest form of crosswordese), and I wasn't sure if 13D: -speak was -ESE or -ISH. So many Hindu gods that I wasn't at all confident there (9D: Hindu god of destruction = SIVA) (having the "V" would've helped) yet, and HOLESAWS???? (8D: Ring-shaped cutters attached to drills). LOL, forget it. Never seen the term in my life. I eventually had the SAWS part but, yeah, "ring-shaped" wasn't helping me at all. Clue on PHSCALE was vague (7A: Bases make up a part of it), so until I couldn't figure out the VALUE part of SENT(IM)ENTAL VALUE, that corner was a horror show. By contrast, its symmetrical equivalent went down in about 10 seconds. Harumph. And the fill in this thing, yuck. Romanian currency is just one of the terrible ICINGS on this dry cake. ESE ASEAT LAMES WAL LOC ESME REA OEDS IES TSETSE and whatever a CIERA is (!?!?) (2D: Popular Oldsmobile model of the 1980s-'90s) (I had ALERO, and then MIATA, which isn't even an Olds, but I was desperate). And while I'm up in that NW corner, what is with the *two* cross-referenced answers with all *four* parts all jumbled up together in this tiny little space (INNER crossing ERE which is followed by NOWwhich is followed byEAR). That clusterf*** was so choppy and awful, I was sure it was part of the theme until I saw the "*" on the first themer clue (and even after ... I wasn't sure). Please value user experience more, he shouted at the uncaring sky. Have a nice day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Alex Eaton-Salners

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (7-something) (all of the challenge was in that lower-middle section, under the so-called "dome")

THEME: sadly, yes— sigh ... I guess the black squares are supposed to represent a single ONION DOME, even though SAINT / BASIL'S CATHEDRAL in RED SQUARE has many such domes, and even though that black-square arrangement is a pretty poor approximation of an onion dome, frankly

Word of the Day: ERDOS (15A: Paul ___, pioneer in graph theory) —

Paul Erdős (Hungarian: Erdős Pál [ˈɛrdøːʃ ˈpaːl]; 26 March 1913 – 20 September 1996) was a renowned Hungarian mathematician. He was one of the most prolific mathematicians and producers of mathematical conjectures of the 20th century. He was known both for his social practice of mathematics (he engaged more than 500 collaborators) and for his eccentric lifestyle (Time magazine called him The Oddball's Oddball). He devoted his waking hours to mathematics, even into his later years—indeed, his death came only hours after he solved a geometry problem at a conference in Warsaw. [...] Other idiosyncratic elements of Erdős's vocabulary include:

Children were referred to as "epsilons" (because in mathematics, particularly calculus, an arbitrarily small positive quantity is commonly denoted by the Greek letter (ε)).
Women were "bosses" who "captured" men as "slaves" by marrying them. Divorced men were "liberated". (wikipedia)

• • •

I'm never going to like themes on Friday or Saturday. Well, maybe not never, but you're gonna have to do way, way better than this random trivia test w/ terrible "picture." The theme stuff itself wasn't that hard to pick up, but because it was so cut off from the rest of the grid, the stuff under the "dome" was brutal for me—like a stand-alone puzzle that was way harder than any of the rest of it (probably because the other sections have easy-to-get theme material running through them, whereas there's zero theme material in the "dome" area). But back to the theme: don't care. You deprived me of the joy I get from the zippiest puzzle day of the week with this half-assed architectural nonsense. "Consecrated in 1561," Who Cares? It's not even a proper anniversary puzzle. We have ONION DOMEs all over town, as there are a lot of Eastern Orthodox churches around Binghamton. The black squares in this puzzle don't really capture the contours of the ONION DOME very well. I feel like some alien, or one of the Teletubbies, is looking at me when I look at this puzzle. Self-indulgent nonsense. Pass.

The fill was OK, though I didn't know a bunch of the names. CABOT is a name I only kinda sorta recognize as an explorer (1D: Notable voyager of 1497). Looks like he made it to Newfoundland. Good for him. Also, that ERDOS guy, that's a name I know exclusively because of crosswords, and even then I barely know it. Math guys think other math guys are more famous than they are. I had never heard of EULER before crosswords either, but at least he seems truly worth knowing. ERDOS is math-name crosswordese. ELENA, also crosswordese, and I totally forgot she was a Disney princess. Gross to see DHS here (Department of Homeland Security)—you rarely see it in xwords, which is great, since it's terrible and should be dissolved; and double-gross to see NOT PC, which, again, if you still have crap like NOT PC or UNPC in your wordlists, what are you doing? If you're "insensitive," you're "insensitive," not NOT PC. NOT PC is the language you use when you don't actually believe you were "insensitive" at all. Only total *********s use that kind of language. Shove it. NOT PC is disavowing language. It's "I'm sorry you were offended" language. It's trollspeak. It sucks.

I had DEM before GOV (57A: Cuomo, for one) and AGE before GPA (41D: N.C.A.A. eligibility consideration), both of which made the under-the-"dome" part additionally hard. No way I could see KITCHEN from just the -CHEN with 49A: Island locale as the clue. Clue needs a "perhaps." Lots of (most) KITCHENs do not have islands, ugh. Why can't you just make a fun, bouncy Friday themeless. Other people seem capable. It's mysterious. This showy crap is for the birds when the "show" is not impressive (as it usually is not). If you're gonna get cute, make sure you stick the landing.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Trenton Charlson

Relative difficulty: Medium (7-ish)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: HENRI Bergson (2D: French philosopher Bergson) —

Henri-Louis Bergson (French: [bɛʁksɔn]; 18 October 1859 – 4 January 1941) was a French philosopher who was influential in the tradition of continental philosophy, especially during the first half of the 20th century until the Second World War. Bergson is known for his arguments that processes of immediate experience and intuition are more significant than abstract rationalism and science for understanding reality.
He was awarded the 1927 Nobel Prize in Literature "in recognition of his rich and vitalizing ideas and the brilliant skill with which they have been presented". In 1930 France awarded him its highest honour, the Grand-Croix de la Legion d'honneur.
Bergson's great popularity created a controversy in France where his views were seen as opposing the secular and scientific attitude adopted by the Republic's officials. (wikipedia)

• • •

Full of things I don't care about (chess) or actively dislike (OK, maybe that's too strong a thing to say about "How I Met Your Mother," but I never understood the appeal of the show and every time it comes up in crosswords I assume the constructor is trying to kiss Will's ass since Will was featured on an episode of the show once ... I'm sure the show is fine, it just wasn't for me, kind of like this puzzle). SHAMU is off-putting because animal abuse is off-putting, and seeing the horrible DHS mentioned in the puzzle for the *second day in a row* was a downer. The grid seems largely solid, overall, but aside from containing a few of my favorite things (MAUS, LAURA Linney, Anne MEARA), it didn't give much joy today. Sputtered a bit up top in the NW and more so in the NE, but the part that really slowed me down was PAWN PROMOTION, a phrase I don't recognize at all. I'm familiar with the concept of your pawn getting turned into a queen if it makes it all the way to your opponent's back line or whatever you call it, but the PROMOTION part was a bear for me. Needed almost every cross. Math / science / chess guys assume you know the intricacies of all their ****; I don't really mind that these topics are in puzzles, since they're part of the world, but I really feel like there's more of that stuff ... to the exclusion of other stuff ... because a certain kind of man still dominates the constructor ranks. Very similar white math/sciencey guys. I know and love a few of them, but it's ... a lot. I just feel the compulsion to roll my eyes every time there's (yet another) dude byline and I have to deal with some minor mathematician or some chess terminology or whatever. And then BARNEY (I knew) ... random last name. Not too fun. Red meat for chess fans who watch CBS, but PAS my thing. Bottom half of the puzzle, esp. the SE, was Tuesday-easy.

Surprised it took me as long as it did to finish considering how many gimmes there were. SHH "HEY YA" TSETSE LAURA Linney GRETA Gerwig MAUS BASSALE SLUR ARF REM, all no-brainers. But in addition to those long central answers that I didn't fully know, I got hung up around HENRI (whom I also didn't know), and then particularly in the NE, where I stupidly wrote in HODA instead of RIPA (16A: Gifford's talk show successor). Hoda Kotb is Gifford's co-host successor ... successor to Regis in Kathie Lee's life ... Anyway, four letters, female talk show personality associated with Kathie Lee Gifford, you can kinda see how I made the mistake. Kinda. I also thought 9D: Do some fast data processing? (CRAM) was CHEW ... because after you "fast" ... you then eat ... during which, presumably, you CHEW? And the food is the "data" you are "processing"? With your teeth? Question mark?

Lots of mistakes today. Aside from CHEW and HODA, I had HIS- before HER- (does anyone really still say "HERstory" ... feels very early '90s) (5D: Lead-in to story). I had SUNRA before SHAMU (I want to live in the world where SUNRA is the correct answer here) (4A: Performer for whom a San Diego stadium was named). I had HEIDI before HENRI and AGREE before AMITY (33D: Accord). And for 37A: Herb of the parsley family (ANISE), I had the -SE and wrote in PULSE ... yup, I sure did. That's a thing, isn't it? PULSE? [looks it up] Well, it's "the edible seeds of certain pod-bearing plants, like chickpeas and lentils," so it's *a* thing, and an edible thing at that, but it ain't related to parsley. Why would I go there and not just straight to the fairly common ANISE? I don't know. Anyway, I think that's it. Hope this puzzle resonated for at least some of you. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Barbara Lin

Relative difficulty: Easy (7:57)

THEME:"Musical Interlude"— wacky answers are created by adding the notes of the scale (DO, RE, MI, FA, SOL, LA, TI) to familiar phrases:

Theme answers:

AMAZING DOG RACE (23A: Iditarod, for one?) ("Amazing Grace")
FORESTER PARENT (31A: One driving kids around in a Subaru?) (foster parent)
ORGAN DOMINATION (47A: Letting out all the stops to drown out the other instruments?) (organ donation)
SCARFACE RESOURCES (62A: Cocaine and guns, in a Pacino movie?) (scarce resources)
PARASOL MILITARY (81A: Troops who are worried about sun protection?) (paramilitary)
GLARE AT GRANDMA (93A: Give mom's mom the stink eye?) (great grandma)
THE PITIED PIPER (109A: "Twelve Days of Christmas" musician who invites sympathy?) (the Pied Piper)

Word of the Day: UAR (77D: Former Mideast grp.) —

The United Arab Republic (UAR; Arabic: الجمهورية العربية المتحدة‎ al-Jumhūrīyah al-'Arabīyah al-Muttaḥidah) was a sovereign state in the Middle East from 1958 to 1971. It was initially a political union between Egypt (including the occupied Gaza Strip) and Syria from 1958 until Syria seceded from the union after the 1961 Syrian coup d'état -- leaving a rump state. Egypt continued to be known officially as the United Arab Republic until 1971.
The republic was led by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. The UAR was a member of the United Arab States, a loose confederation with the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen, which was dissolved in 1961. (wikipedia)

• • •

A very normal 20th-century effort. The wacky add-some-letters stuff and the musical scale stuff, absolutely basic theme material for years and years. Doesn't mean it's inherently bad, just that you better put it to good (novel, fun) use, or else it's going to feel like an exercise in nostalgia. The Way Puzzles Were. And this one just didn't feel snappy or contemporary enough, or wacky enough, for that matter. It was a perfectly serviceable but ultimately tepid effort. And it's a good thing that it went by so fast (i.e. was so easy) because it is not a grid you want to look at too closely. There's a lot, and I mean a lot, of substandard fill here. Or, rather, it's pretty standard, and pretty tired, and pretty wince-inducing. Very short list I've scrawled out quickly here on my printed-out puzzle: MATIC EROO ENTO NUTRI (so ... just prefixes and suffixes) ATPAR ATNINE ACERB ARMEE RICAN MRE UAR (those last two *right next to each other*) ENORM and something called EDATE??? What the hell? Meanwhile over in the Plus column, all I have is SPOTIFY NIGIRI GNOCCHI and KALE SALAD (which sounds like a fun night in during quarantine). WIRETAP and MAHALIA are OK too. But overall, the theme just doesn't produce the fireworks it needs to in order to be successful, and the fill is too often gratingly non-wordy and overfamiliar. I'd give GLARE AT GRANDMA a thumbs-up, and maaaaybe SCARFACE RESOURCES too. Everything else just kinda lies there.

I had a clunky start to this one, in that I thought there was going to be some reference to the TV show "The Amazing Race" (the existence of this show makes the ultimate answer, AMAZING DOG RACE, very very anticlimactic ... like, you're just adding the word "dog" to a pre-existing TV show title). Then I realized that the base phrase was "Amazing Grace," w/ a "G," which has me wondering now if "The Amazing Race" was *always* a pun on "Amazing Grace" ... somehow? I guess it's pretty typical to start (comparatively) slow, since the start is always when you have the least amount of info to go on, by definition. Picking up speed is probably a pretty normal phenomenon. Still, looking bad, I sputtered up there compared to how blazingly fast I was afterward. Once I cleared the alleged Beatles song ("YES IT IS"!?!?!) (in my head it goes, "Speaking words of wisdom / YES IT IS!") (33A: B-side to the Beatles'"Ticket to Ride"), it was off to the races. This was one of those solves where I could feel, about halfway through, that I was going to be close to record pace. Sometimes you can just feel it. But then I typo'd EDGING (90D: Trim) as EEGING and that completely screwed up the tail end of the GRANDMA themer (-GRANEMA), which meant that the whole SE corner all of a sudden got much much harder. It felt big and empty compared to the areas I'd just been slicing through. So I had to plunk the "LA" in there in the circled squares (so knowing the theme actually helped!) and muscle my way through to the end. Not sure how I never actually saw the ROSIE clue, since that would've been a gimme (dang it!) (96D: Perez of "Do the Right Thing"), but anyway, I still got to the end in under 8, which is very fast for me. I think my record on a Sunday NYTXW is in the 7:40s. The high of nearly breaking my record kept me from having too many bad feelings about this puzzle, but as the high wore off and I reviewed the grid ... things soured quickly. But as I say, it's a very solid late-'90s kind of effort. B+ if it were actually the late-'90s. But for today, a C at best.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: David Alfred Bywaters

Relative difficulty: slow for me at 3:21 (so "Medium-Challenging," I guess)

THEME: "your former lover" [shudder] — EX- words clued as if they have something to do with your "ex":

Theme answers:

EXTENSION (17A: Stress between you and your former lover?)
EXCLAIM (26A: Thing your former lover said about you?)
EXCOMMUNICATION (41A: Former lover's text, e.g.?)
EXPOSES (51A: Former lovers' stances in photos?)
EXPENDING (66A: Current lover who seems suspiciously preoccupied?)

Word of the Day: ESTHER (21A: One of a pair of Old Testament books with female names) —

The Book of Esther (hebrew: מְגִלַּת אֶסְתֵּר, Megillat Esther), also known in Hebrew as "the Scroll" (Megillah), is a book in the third section (Ketuvim, "Writings") of the Jewish Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible) and in the Christian Old Testament. It is one of the five Scrolls (Megillot) in the Hebrew Bible. It relates the story of a Hebrew woman in Persia, born as Hadassah but known as Esther, who becomes queen of Persia and thwarts a genocide of her people. The story forms the core of the Jewish festival of Purim, during which it is read aloud twice: once in the evening and again the following morning. The books of Esther and Song of Songs are the only books in the Hebrew Bible that do not mention God. (wikipedia)

• • •

The vibe on this one is very '70s, hey baby, have you met my lovvvvvuh hot tub etc. Something about the phrase "lover" has always rubbed me the wrong way—like, we get it, you're f***ing, dial it back. The whole thing felt some kind of weird thematic mash-up of Rupert Holmes'"Escape" and Ambrosia's "How Much I Feel":

You get a bunch of free EX-s (once you grasp the theme), but then the whole weirdness of the "?" clues makes it harder than a usual Monday, so I don't know, maybe difficulty-wise that comes out as a wash. For me, the "?" stuff, and the reparsing it entailed, made it more Tuesday than Monday for me. I don't think I fully grasped any of the themers as I was solving them. I was just dimly aware that they were phrases where an EX was doing something, but the answers themselves were just EX words, so I just got crosses and sort of waited for an EX word to appear that looked like it had something vaguely to do with the content of the theme clue. Found the whole thing repetitive and a little boring. I also got weirdly held up in the north, where 5A: Oaf, ugh, that could be like two thousand things, and the first one thousand I guessed were wrong (LOUT was my main guess). Also had Hop TO IT, not ON IT—"Hop TO IT" feels way way way more idiomatically correct to my ears, especially as a command. Super-annoying to have the clue on the crappy fill be the thing that throws you off. ON IT could be clued so much more clearly and cleanly. And cluing OTOH as merely "transition" slowed me down too (7D: Texter's transition); no hint there that it's an abbr. One more slow-down at COSMOS, where the clue ... just did nothing for me (54A: Absolutely everything). I'm focusing on slow-downs because nothing else about the puzzle (after the "lovvvvvvuh" stuff) seemed remarkable.

[Only Prince may say "lover"]

IN TWO *and* IN TOW? That's ... bold. I teach Shakespeare not infrequently and still canNot keep all the Italian men's names straight to save my life. ANTONIO, sure, sounds right (25D: Villain in Shakespeare's "The Tempest"). Again, just got some crosses and waited for something familiar to arise. Don't think of TEA (like, black tea, normal tea, tea) as a "throat soother"—that's more "herbal tea." Did not expect something as generic as MESS for 42D: Target of a cleanup. "Target your mess with a cleanup, children!" Meh. REUNE will always be an awful word. Wish there were more fun things in this grid to talk about. Alas. Bye.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Constructor: Dave Bardolph

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: Shakespearean cookout — famous phrases from Shakespeare, clued as if they referred to a "cookout":

Theme answers:

THE POUND OF FLESH (17A: 16-ounce sirloin that Shylock brought to the cookout?)
LEND ME YOUR EARS (27A: Mark Antony's request to the farmer when he realized he didn't have enough corn for the cookout?)
AY, THERE'S THE RUB (48A: Cry from Hamlet when he spotted his favorite spice mix at the cookout?)
WHAT'S DONE IS DONE (64A: Lady Macbeth's declaration upon checking the steaks at the cookout?)

Word of the Day: Las Vegas RAIDERs (51D: Las Vegas player) —

The Las Vegas Raiders are a professional American football team based in the Las Vegas metropolitan area. The Raiders compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) West division. In 2020, the Raiders will play their home games at Allegiant Stadium in Paradise, Nevada.
Founded on January 30, 1960, and originally based in Oakland, California, they played their first regular season game on September 11, 1960, as a charter member of the American Football League (AFL). They moved to the NFL with the AFL-NFL merger in 1970. The team departed Oakland to play in Los Angeles from the 1982 season through the 1994 season before returning to Oakland at the start of the 1995 season. On March 27, 2017, NFL team owners voted nearly unanimously to approve the Raiders' application to relocate to Las Vegas. Nearly three years later, on January 22, 2020, the Raiders officially moved to Las Vegas. (wikipedia)

• • •

These are the kinds of corny (!) puns that I expect from the NYTXW on a Tuesday. Dadpuzz, for sure. I appreciate the timely late-summer vibe of the "cookout" premise. The only real objection I have comes from my ears, who do not like the THE in THE POUND OF FLESH. Unlike the other themers, that one exists as a pretty common metaphor in English, and in the context it's "A" pound of flesh, not THE. I'm sure the quotation is accurate, though I don't remember it precisely, hang on ... OK, wait *hang on*!!! Portia literally says, at one point, citing the contract, "The words expressly are 'a pound of flesh'" ... Like ... the play itself is literally telling you exactly how the quote should go. Yes, the phrase "pound of flesh" gets repeated a lot in the play, but I feel like Portia's words are basically the play rendering its ruling on what the proper wording of this phrase should be. I find for the "A," against the "THE," the theme is rendered invalid. Man, you have no idea how happy I am that my ears recoiled *justly*, and not just idiosyncratically or unfairly, as maybe perhaps sometimes occasionally happens. Vindication for my ears! Huzzah! But yeah, The THE is bad, and now that it's been disproved by the text, ruinous.

Puzzle felt easy overall, but my time was actually slightly *above* average. I really do solve more slowly in the early morning, for whatever reason. I feel alert and clear-headed enough, but things ... like, all the things ... just aren't up to full speed yet. My entire body just wants to cchhiillll in the early morning—it's such a glorious, slow time of day—so I think I'm unapt to break any speed records when I do an early-morning solve, and I have to adjust my difficulty rating accordingly. Looking the puzzle over, I actually made a bunch of mistakes, or just blanked out initially at a bunch of answers. I truly could not process RANT (6D: Chew someone out, maybe), since you REAM someone out, not RANT them out, but I get that RANT here doesn't require the object, it's an intransitive verb, yadda yadda. Oh, and I also don't play Yahtzee at all so PAIR was weird to me—sounds like cards, not dice (15A: Unexciting Yahtzee roll), which I guess is sorta the point of Yahtzee, but whatever. PAIR is not a word I know from that game.

Then I got really stuck at RAIDER, as my brain had apparently not processed, or cared in any way, that the Oakland Raiders moved (again). I know that Las Vegas has hockey now (!?), but that's as far as I got, or am apparently willing to go, on my Las Vegas sports knowledge. My brain really only has enough room for UNLV (4), to be honest. Life was better when that city had no major pro sports teams. Slightly stunned that Serbia has the DINAR as its unit of currency, but yes, it's one of two European countries using that denomination (the other being North Macedonia, which I sincerely did not know was a country). Here are the rest:

Not sure how to spell the LEA in LEA& Perrins, so that hurt with RAIDER as well. I sincerely assumed a "Las Vegas player" was a ROLLER for a little bit there. Had STAR before SEAL (59D: Member of an elite team) and, without the Neil Diamond context, or any musical context at all, had no idea what 70A: Adjective for Caroline could possibly want (SWEET). Still came in well under 4. That's all for today. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. this blog got a nice mention in the NYT yesterday (8/24), in a very unexpected place: Wesley Morris's reflections on the 2004 (!) movie season. Specifically, in a discussion of M. Night Shyamalan's "The Village."

Showing up in an article about crosswords: expected. Showing up in an article about movies?: priceless.

P.P.S. my wife points out that LEND ME YOUR EARS would make no sense for a cookout, since presumably you are not going to be returning ... the ears

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Constructor: Carl Larson

Relative difficulty: Challenging (just for me, because I misread a clue and then just stared at a single blank square for what felt like eternity; puzzle is actually probably more Medium)

THEME: WORK PORTFOLIO (34A: Collection that demonstrates job skills ... as suggested by 17-, 24-, 48- and 55-Across)— familiar phrases are all clued as if they are "investments" for various occupations... the latter part of each phrase being something one can invest in:

Theme answers:

COMEDY GOLD (17A: Investment for a humorist?)
BEEF STOCK (24A: Investment for a butcher?)
IONIC BOND (48A: Investment for a physicist?)
MENU OPTION (55A: Investment for a restaurateur?)

Word of the Day: Ken OLIN (16A: "Thirtysomething" actor Ken) —

Kenneth Edward Olin (born July 30, 1954) is an American actor, television director and producer. He is known for his role as Michael Steadman in the ABC drama series Thirtysomething (1987-1991), for which he received Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Drama nomination in 1990. Olin later began working as television director and producer; his producer credits include Alias (2001-2006), Brothers & Sisters (2006–2011), and This Is Us (2016-present). Olin is married to actress Patricia Wettig. (wikipedia)

• • •

Wow ... investments. Portfolios. Were y'all out of golf- and chess-themed puzzles to torment me with? The very topic is so dull, and the execution here is so weird and tenuous—reliant entirely on clue phrasing for the revealer to make any sense, which it barely does. The choice of professions in the theme clues is so weird. A humorist, a butcher, a physicist (?), and a restaurateur (??). Why physicist? Aren't IONIC BONDs from chemistry? Why not a chemist? And stocks and bonds I get, great, that works, but after that, it gets real arbitrary-feeling. OPTION made some sense to me, but GOLD!?! The other three are generic terms, but GOLD is quite specific. I was looking for a type of thing, but what I got was just ... thing. That answer was totally horrible for me, both because it's just bad (inconsistent) theme-wise, and because I misread the AIG clue as [Big inits. in France] (as opp. to [Big inits. in finance]). Maybe I scanned the clue once and didn't reread it, I don't know? But I clearly expected that I'd eventually infer the themer ... but no. I had COMEDY -OLD and zero idea what letter went there. At the very end. Even when I had the theme in place. What investment thingie is -OLD? What common phrase is COMEDY -OLD? I mean, it's my fault for misreading the AIG clue, but a. AIG is bad fill b. GOLD is a horrid outlier among the "investment" words, c. the whole concept of the theme feels wobbly, and most importantly d. I just don't care about this topic at all. At all at all.

Don't put NRA in your puzzle. At all at all. Because now it's just so obvious that you're trying awkwardly to steer around the white supremacist terrorist organization and so we get really dated weird clues like New Deal alphabet soup orgs. (56D: New Deal program with the slogan "We Do Our Part," in brief). A half-experienced constructor could pull NRA and replace it with something as good or better within minutes. The fill on this one is weak all over. The longer stuff works OK, but things get awfully rough / old-fashioned in the short fill: STLO ANE TELS ATT DIRK RANDR ROO etc. Really hate the [Blowout] clue for ROMP because while accurate, it forces you into that "ugh which one is it?" position when you get the RO- (I guessed ROUT, of course). I still can't really make much sense of the COCKTAILS clue. I love COCKTAILS. I would've thought it impossible to make me dislike a COCKTAILS clue. And yet the clue here ... it's so weird and dated and awkward that it just ruins all the joy of the answer. What even is a "dinner invitation"? What kind of formal dinner is this? ["Dinner" preceder ...] is such convoluted nonsense. Is "Dinner" a quote, is it ironic, is the "preceder" part of a phrase? But, no, a "COCKTAILS Dinner" is not a thing, so I guess somehow the "invitation" says "COCKTAILS, Dinner" on it? COCKTAILS followed by "Dinner" quote unquote? Truly I am not familiar with whatever genre of thing this invitation is. I don't understand the clue-writing / editing on this thing at all. The clue on SPEND too, what the heck? (4D: Lighten one's wallet, so to speak) Why would you actually introduce a "one's" into your clue when you don't need to. Awkward. No idea what that clue was going for. I wrote in STEAL. Goodbye to you, puzzle.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Spicy condiment from North Africa / FRI 8-7-20 / Crunchy candy bar since 1930 / Broadway hit informally / Drink that's hard on the stomach / High-risk bond rating / Breaker of celebrity breakup maybe / Symptom Checker offerer / Line-skipping option at airport for short

Conjoined title character of 1990s-2000s Nickelodeon cartoons / SAT 8-8-20 / Sitcom regular at Monk's cafe / Super Six of old autodom / Demographic myth often used with respect to Asian Americans

Struck old-style / SUN 8-9-20 / Ferris Bueller's girlfriend / First Alaskan on major U.S. party ticket / Where to get mullet trimmed / Painter of four freedoms series 1943 / Bygone apple messaging app / Hogwarts professor who was secretly a werewolf

Seoul automaker / MON 8-10-20 / Launch vehicle for many NASA missions / Bright sunny area of a house / Destination of rover Perseverance

Viking who was first ruler of Normandy / TUE 8-11-20 / Pocketbook portmanteau / Popular shooter in old west / Collaborative online reference

Cousin of apple cobbler / WED 8-12-20 / Chart-topping R&B funk band / Weasellike animal with dark fur / Iconic 1971 blaxploitation film / Jazz great with Egyptian sounding name

1974 CIA spoof / THU 8-13-20 / Fitting nickname for athletes at Whittier College / Sea creature pictured on flag of Anguilla

Modern-day home of Ashanti empire / FRI 8-14-20 / Having one on the way slangily / Mushroom eaten in ramen / French term of endearment that literally means cabbage

Film comedy bomb of 1994 / SAT 8-15-20 / Word whispered by quiet old lady in Goodnight Moon / Worms 1980s toys / Internet marketing metric

First name of Peace Nobelist that ends ironically / SUN 8-16-20 / Phillipa who played Eliza in original cast of Hamilton / Charles religious leader known as Father of Modern Revivalism / Slugger Hideki / What a dental scalar removes / Actress Tyler who will be apt age in 2031

Property along the ocean / MON 8-17-20 / Greek peak in Thessaly / Spoonful 1960s pop group / Needs for playing Quidditch

Pre-Q quartet / TUE 8-18-20 / Alanis Morissette song about unfortunate situations / Heroine in Pearl Buck's Good Earth / Balkan land whose capital is Pristina / Grump cat or doge e.g. / Measure fully ratified on 8/18/20

Title detective of 1970s TV / WED 8-19-20 / 1815 novel of romantic misunderstandings / Destroyer of town of Nicolosi in 1669 / Sun Valley locale / Fictional maker of earthquake pills tornado seeds

QB protectors informally / THU 8-20-20 / Mickey's rival for Minnie's affection / Longhorn rival / Hypothetical solar system beyond Neptune / White-barked trees / Pink alcoholic drink familiarly / Relatives of violas /

Notable voyager of 1497 / FRI 8-21-20 / landmark consecrated in 1561 / Imported European wheels / Suffering from desynchronosis

Food mascot in green suit jacket / SAT 8-22-20 / Performer for whom San Diego stadium was named / Beer with triangular logo / Giuseppe leader in Italy's unification / Hangout for Dorian Gray

Ball of vinegared rice topped with raw fish / SUN 8-23-20 / Basketball player in old slang / Party symbol since 1870 / Lyre player of myth / Non-US MLB team on sports tickers

Stress between you and your former lover / MON 8-24-20 / Undercoat of oil painting / Money to tide you over

Adjective for Caroline / TUE 8-25-20 / Unexciting Yahtzee roll / Las Vegas player

Old-fashioned weapon for hand to hand combat / WED 8-26-20 / Strategic objective soon after D-Day invasion / Dinner preceder on dinner invitation