Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle (2024)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Rafael DEVERS(25D: Rafael ___, All-Star third baseman for the Red Sox) —

Rafael Devers Calcaño(/ˈdɛvərz/DEV-ərz;born October 24, 1996) is a Dominican professionalbaseballthird basemanfor theBoston Red SoxofMajor League Baseball(MLB). He made his MLB debut in 2017. Devers won theSilver Slugger Awardin 2021 and 2023 and was anAll-Starin 2021 and 2022. [...]On January 3, 2023, Devers and the Red Sox agreed to a $17.5million salary for the 2023 season.On January 11, Devers and the Red Sox signed a ten-year contract extension worth $313.5million, which will take effect in the 2024 season. [...]Devers was given the nickname “Carita,” which means “baby face,” because he was so happy and smiling as a child. He used the nickname for Players' Weekend in 2019. (wikipedia)

• • •

I guess the idea is that Saturday = Friday + proper nouns. Yesterday's puzzle was very easy for most people, and it was notably light on names, and devoid of any names that might be considered "niche" or "obscure." Today's puzzle was, for me, just as easy, if not EASIER, but I was aware as I was moving through it of how many more Name Bombs there were. If you know the names, then they aren't bombs—they're actually accelerators, and today, I knew most of them, so whooooosh. But it seems very likely that if solvers get hung up anywhere today, it's gonna be somewhere in the thicket of names. DEVERS O'DAY STYNE DON VITO VERA AIMEE, somewhere in there. Because the rest of it was cake. Wednesday-level cake. Cake that tastes like Wednesday (in my head, "Wednesday" is brown, so ... chocolate?). There are hardly any inky patches on my printed-out puzzle, which means trouble spots were nearly non-existent. I wish this puzzle had run yesterday and something much, Much thornier had run today. Today's puzzle definitely had the lightness, the breeziness, and the fun factor, but no bite. Well, there's the SNAKE BITE (51A: Injury that usually involves two puncture wounds), but that (ironically) was no threat at all. I guess I should just be grateful that I got back-to-back enjoyable Fridays, but it's hard not to notice how much they've eased up the late-week puzzles. Maybe their money-generating algorithms A.I. told them it would be best for sales and renewed subscriptions. Probably tons of computing power going into finding exactly how much you can dumb things down and still maintain brand value and integrity. But these days, if I want challenge, I gotta turn to cryptics, British cryptics in particular. Those things will punch me in the face and then drag me around the block a few times. Am I into that? I am not ... not into it.

So let's pretend it's Friday, because this is a pretty wonderful Friday puzzle. Little bit of struggle for traction up front and then like fireworks I went exploding out of the NW. That corner has the front ends of two grid-spanning answers, so [Boom!] and [Boom!]

Two trouble spots today. The first one was AIMEE (17A: ___ Lou Wood, "Sex Education" actress). I've watched that damn show (the first two seasons, anyway) and still had no idea what that name was, or which character, or anything. I mostly remember Gillian Anderson. Thank god the name was spelled AIMEE and not AYMEE, as I briefly feared—I never have any idea if it's SHYEST or SHIEST. The first one is the one that looks right, but thank god my brain was like "No! AYMEE is not a thing!" and so we (me and my brain) went with the "I." Good choice. The other trouble spot was ... well, speaking of "spots," it was DIE, or the answer that I thought was DIE. A DIE is a [Small cube] (with spots!) so ... yeah, that was one trap I fell right into, face first. I guess ONE x ONE x ONE = ONE, so ONE is a "cube" in the mathematical sense. Beyond those two answers, I had only rudimentary and minor trouble. OCH before ACH (4D: Interjection in Innsbruck), SHOUTED before SHORTED (5D: Blew a fuse, say), that kind of (small) stuff.

Explainers and other note-type things:

• 1A: 16th-century coinage of geographer Gerardus Mercator (ATLAS)— well I knew it was gonna be map-related, but that didn't help much. At least not until I got a few crosses. I opened today with LODE OCH SMOOCH SH(Y/I)EST.
• 24A: A.M.A. member? (ASK)— I think "A.M.A." was a phenomenon that started on reddit. It means "Ask Me Anything." Celebrities would do "A.M.A." sessions, sometimes as part of some charitable endeavor (here's one with Will Ferrell from eleven years ago). Now people say "AMA" on social media all the time, mostly facetiously. For example.

[OK so he doesn't use the abbr. "AMA" here but he should have]

• 13A: It's bigger than a peck (SMOOCH)— did you write BUSHEL? I have no idea how big a bushel or a peck is, but I had enough crosses in place not to fall for BUSHEL.
• 19A: Final track on Beyoncé's "Cowboy Carter" ("AMEN")— first of all, great album. Second of all, I could not have told you what the final track was, but the "final" part made it easy to infer.

• 39A: Classic tune used as an ice cream truck jingle, with "The" ("ENTERTAINER")— I did not know that ice cream trucks played this. Have they always? I know this song from The Sting (1973).

• 42A: Marching band syllable (PAH)— probably the worst thing in the grid, but you're allowed a stray 3-letter clunker here and there. I wanted OOM here. Right idea, wrong ... tuba sound part.
• 10D: Oppenheimer's creation ... which "Oppenheimer" certainly wasn't (A-BOMB)— this clue should absolutely positively have a "?" on it, since there is a hyphen in the first (actual bomb) meaning and not not not in the second (movie) meaning. It's a cute cluing idea (the movie "Oppenheimer" was certainly not a flop, i.e. A BOMB), but come on, editors. Get it together.
• 21D: Person who consumes a ritual meal to absorb wrongdoings of the dead (SIN-EATER)— this has made one other NYTXW appearance (in 2021), which remains the only other time I've heard this term in my life, I think. But it's real enough.
• 35D: Untruthfully? (ON A DARE)— a properly Saturday clue, for once. It's a bit of a stretch, but it's playing on the slumber party game "Truth or Dare." If you don't choose "Truth," then you have to do something ... ON A DARE. The clue is bonkers and only barely holds together, but that's what makes it charming, I think. I like your moxie, weird "?" clue! You stay in the picture!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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THEME: none

Word of the Day: ETHEL Barrymore(1D: Actress Barrymore with an eponymous Broadway theater) —

[None But the Lonely Heart]

Ethel Barrymore(bornEthel Mae Blythe; August 15, 1879 – June 18, 1959) was an American actress and a member of theBarrymore familyof actors.Barrymore was a stage, screen and radio actress whose career spanned six decades, and was regarded as "The First Lady of the American Theatre". She received four nominations for theAcademy Award for Best Supporting Actress, winning forNone but the Lonely Heart(1944). //She was the sister of actorsJohnandLionel Barrymore, the aunt of actorJohn Drew Barrymoreand great-aunt of actressDrew Barrymore. She was a granddaughter of actress and theater managerLouisa Lane Drewand niece of Broadway matinée idolJohn Drew, Jr. andVitagraph Studiosstage and screen starSidney Drew. (wikipedia)

• • •

Ah, I'd forgotten what these were like (these being Robyn Weintraub puzzles). Feels like it's been a while. Has it been a while? Wow, it really has. This is the first RW puzzle of 2024, according to my own 2024 spreadsheet. Her byline was last seen Dec. 29, 2023. Anyway, in case you didn't know because you are very new to puzzles, Robyn's Friday themeless crosswords are pretty much the Gold Standard, the ones that I'm measuring all others against, and today's puzzle is a good example of why—marquee answers for days (I count 12!?), and an overall flow that makes the puzzle a delight to move through. Whoosh. That's what they have. Or Zing, if you like. The best of the marquees tend to be (as they are today) colorful colloquial phrases, figures of speech that really give the grid some life ("THAT'S THE SPOT!" "THERE'S MORE!" "DON'T REMIND ME!"). There are actually only two flat-out debut answers today ("THAT'S THE SPOT!" and INSIDE JOBS), but debuts (while nice) aren't necessarily the goal. I've seen plenty of terrible debuts, where I thought, "Yes, the world was better when we were not putting that in puzzles." The goal is a feeling of freshness and a spirit of fun and a wide and varied palette of answers, all in a cleanly filled grid. And on those counts, this puzzle delivers. It's SMART! (30A: Stylish in appearance).

The thing about smooth puzzles like this is that when I hit a bump, it really Bumps. Whether it's me or the puzzle itself that is clunking, rough spots become very memorable. Some combination of me and the puzzle clunking simultaneously made the start of this solve very awkward. I should've just written in ETHEL, because come on, what other actress besides DREW has that name, but I had already decided that an "intaglio" involved the act of TILE-ing, not ETCHing, and I had also decided that Queen Suthida Bajrasudhabimalalakshana was a RANI (crossword reflex!). I maybe should've recognized the name as THAI, but that's the problem, that, the way I used "THAI" just there—I would only ever use that word as an adjective. "She's a THAI"? I'm sure that's valid, but it is not at all intuitive to my ears. If the clue had been [Like Queen Suthida Bajrasudhabimalalakshana], RANI (a noun) would've been out, as would all nouns, and so THAI would likely have come to me sooner. This is like cluing GERMAN as [Werner Herzog, e.g.]. I want GERMAN to be an adjective, even though I know that it can be a noun. Cluing THAI as a noun, while technically legal, felt very awkward. Anyway, I'm mostly embarrassed that my first response here placed the Queen in an entirely different country. At least RANI is, in fact, the equivalent of "Queen." That makes my error slightly less mortifying.

[my neighborhood THAI place]

Couldn't remember what "intaglio" was, couldn't identify the nationality of a queen—that pretty much gummed up the works in the NW, but I just moved over to the N where I found a NUDE, who kindly helped me get some real traction, and from that point, the Whoosh began—across the NE and then back over to the NW and then down to the SW and finally up the IRISES and over to the NATO SUMMIT, finishing up with not Kea but LOA (52D: "Mahalo nui ___" (Hawaiian for "Thank you very much")). After the TILE / RANI fiasco of the NW, only a couple of places really stood out as ugly or troublesome. I would call the sweater type a "crewneck," so 31D: Works on a crew? (DARNS) just didn't land for me. Needed every single cross. [correction: you darn socks, obviously, so this is a crew sock, which I have really Really never heard called just a “crew”]. I also have never really heard the term STEAM TABLE (except, apparently, in the NYTXW back in '09. Sounds like something you'd find at a spa. I can picture one, I guess, but maybe the buffets I've been to of late have used sterno as a heating element? Not really a buffet enthusiast, to be honest. But STEAM TABLEs are very real things—just beyond my ken (and general vocabulary). I wouldn't say ORE comes in "pockets" (29D: Things in pockets that can be picked?) (I've always been told—by the crossword!—that ORE comes in "seams"), nor would I say that a bridge "runs across" a river, say (see clue for SPANS (25A: Runs across)), but both clues are obviously trying (very hard) to misdirect you, and they're both technically valid, so OK. Not sure why there's a "?" on the ORE clue except to say "hey look at me doing some really bad 'pickpocket' wordplay." Maybe this clue just wanted to do a little "pocket" callback to the CARGO PANTS clue (3D: They have deep pockets). The misdirection on [Runs across] is more sly. That clue obviously wants you to think "Runs across" as in "Meets" or "Encounters." Mission accomplished.

Notes:

• 17A: Gather together (HERD)— an additional factor in the whole opening NW wipe-out. I wanted REAP ... maybe MASS.
• 45A: Emulates Niobe (MOURNS) — she's so strongly associated with tears that after CRIES wouldn't fit, I was out of ideas. But MOURNS, sure, that is what occasions the crying.

["Like Niobe, all tears"]

• 49A: "Ew, ew, EW!" ("TMI!") — "Too Much Information"; a really great clue. You can really feel the "stop talking now!" energy.
• 10D: Pair making an appearance in the "Iliad"?(IOTAS)— a "letteral" clue, with the referent being the two (Greek) "I"s in the word "Iliad." ["Iliad" pair] (no question mark) would've been wickeder.
• 13D: Best Actress nominee in 1992 who won Best Supporting Actress in 2020 (DERN)— it says something (bad? telling?) about my pop culture brain that without looking I could name the 1992 movie in question (Rambling Rose) but not the 2020 one. I thought maybe Certain Women(wrong year) or elseLittle Women, but she wasn't nominated for that (Ronin and Pugh were). Did you know she was also in Dr. T and the Women (2000)? This means that there is (unofficially, but now also canonically) a Laura DERN "Women" trilogy. Anyway,DERN won her Oscar for playing a divorce lawyer in Marriage Story.

[DR. T has made 27 NYTXW appearances to date, mostly for this movie ...though occasionally also for the freaky Seussian musical fantasy, The 5000 Fingers of DR. T(1953)]

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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THEME:A "letteral" interpretation— all-cap clues contain parenthetical letters that must be read self-referentially (as hom*ophones of those letters) in order to arrive at the answers. So [ALMIGHT(Y)] gives you the letter "Y" inside a word that can be a name for God, which is to say it gives you a "Y" in God's name ... which is the colloquial phrase the clue is looking for ("Why in God's name....!?"—though the actual answer retains the letter-for-hom*ophone swap-out: Y IN GOD'S NAME)

Theme answers:

• B IN TOUCH (15A: EM(B)RACE)
• Y IN GOD'S NAME (23A: ALMIGHT(Y))
• I OF THE HURRICANE (39A: TROP(I)CAL STORM)
• C OF HUMANITY (53: (C)OMPASSION)
• Ps IN A POD (67A: GROU(P) OF HUM(P)BACKS)

Word of the Day: PEEL(43A: Pizzeria implement) —

Apeelis a tool used bybakersto slide loaves ofbread,pizzas,pastries, and otherbakedgoods into and out of anoven.It is usually made ofwood, with a flat surface for carrying the baked good and ahandleextending from one side of that surface. Alternatively, the carrying surface may be made ofsheet metal, which is attached to a wooden handle. Wood has the advantage that it does not become hot enough to burn the user's hands the way metal can, even if it is frequently in the oven. The word presumably derives from theFrenchpelle, which describes both a peel and a shovel. //A peel's intended functions are to:

• Transfer delicate breads, pastries, etc into an oven where transferring them directly by hand could deform their delicate structure.
• Allow food to be placed further back in an oven than could normally be reached by the baker.
• Keep the baker's hands out of the hottest part of an oven, or prevent the baker from burning their hands on the hot baked goods.

Prior to use, peels are often sprinkled withflour,cornmeal,ormilledwheatbran, to allow baked goods to easily slide onto and off them. (wikipedia)

• • •

Hey, wanna see the most crosswordiest opening two-word combo of all time?

Could've done without the bro-y vibe of poker slang (13D: A-2-3-4-5 straight, in poker slang =WHEEL) coupled with gym slang (56D: Strong as an ox, in slang =YOKED). When you're still running close to 80% male constructors, this stuff stands out. To me, anyway. There's not a woman in this puzzle. Even the Barbie answer was KENS, LOL. I knew YOKED but did not know WHEEL, which was one of only a few sticking points today. WHEEL / LOUIE was a cross where I knew neither answer, but could infer the "E" pretty easily. The crossword continues to operate from the premise that The Jungle Book is common knowledge. Do people still watch it? I don't think I've ever seen it. I know about its many characters only from crosswords. I also didn't know ISH, which is insane, as I know mom read One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish to me as a child. Apparently the title is all I retained. I go to Paul & Sons Pizzeria at least twice a week and I have watched Paul pull umpteen pizzas out of his oven but I somehow never knew that the thing that he carries those pizzas to and from the oven on is called a PEEL!! PEEL, PUP, WHEEL, all new to me today.

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THEME:Hell's-a-pop-pun— an early Father's Day puzzle; familiar phrases with a word for "father" in them are clued via"Pop" puns:

Theme answers:

• DAD JOKE (1A: Pop corn?)
• PATERNITY TESTS (21A: Pop quizzes?)
• "THIS OLD MAN" (39A: Pop song?)
• FATHERLY ADVICE (60A: Pop wisdom?)
• DADAISM (73A: Pop art?)

Word of the Day:"NOIRE et Blanche"(52A: "___ et Blanche" (Man Ray's study in contrast)) —

Noire et Blanche(French forBlack and White) is a black and white photograph taken by American visual artistMan Rayin 1926. It is one of his most famous photographs at the time when he was an exponent ofSurrealism. //The picture was first published in the ParisianVoguemagazine, on 1 May 1926, with the titleVisage de Nacre et Masque d'Ébene.It would be published once again with the current title in the French magazinesVariétésandArt et Décorationin 1928. //Man Ray had already published a similar photograph in the cover of theDadamagazine ofFrancis Picabia, with the titleBlack and White, in 1924, depicting two statuettes, one European and classical and the other African. //The title of the photograph refers both to the medium of black and white photography and the duality expressed in the dicotomy [sic!] between the caucasian female model and the African black mask. The photograph depicts the famous French modelKiki de Montparnasse, posing expressionless, with her eyes closed and her head lying on a table, holding with her left hand a black African mask vertically upon its surface. The picture juxtaposes the similarities between the soft oval white face of the model, as if she were a living mask, with the shiny black mask, also with eyes closed and a serene expression.It also expresses the artist's interest in African art, which had a huge influence in the artistic movements of the first decades of the 20th century. (wikipedia)

• • •

This was something of a groaner, but maybe that was the point? When the puzzle leads with DAD JOKE, (which is, itself, the answer to a DAD JOKE clue), well, you can't say the puzzle wasn't up front about its whole agenda. Holiday puzzles should be on (or at least immediately adjacent to) the holidays themselves, and this one feels a little too early, but that's not the problem. The problem is the corny concept and especially the dull-as-dishwater fill. The theme answers don't sing, and the fill is just workmanlike. I kinda like LOVE TAP, but not (at all) as a car collision clue (though that is a valid meaning) (42A: Minor bump against another car). I would've liked it to be more affectionate, taps people give to each other, smacks on the butt or boops on the nose or whatever. Or the thing that cats do when they want you to pet them, or when they "fight" with each other. No one wants to see more crashes if they don't have to. Choosing car collisions (even minor ones) over actual love—strong boo. So the best answer in the grid by far got a less-than-cute clue. Otherwise, what is there? NSA and CIA. SOU and ADE. "Words" you (I) only see in crosswords, like IDEAMAP and KIDVID (although usually that one comes as a partial clue for VID—this is the first time we're getting the full KIDVID since 1973 (!!?)). DADAISM is probably the most original, surprising, and boldest of the themers, but it's also one that rings just slightly out of tune for me, as clued. DADAISM is the movement, not the art itself. I was expecting an actual work of "art" (the way "THIS OLD MAN" was an actual "song"). I know I'm splitting hairs, there, but missing by an inch can sometimes feel worse than missing by a mile. That second "A" in DADAISM was my last square (because quote unquote supermodels, ugh, my Kryptonite (63D: Supermodel Delevingne)***—that clue is Irene CARA erasure! (RIP, crossword legend)). Also, is "Pop wisdom" a thing people say? "Pop psychology," I've heard. "Popular wisdom," I've heard—but not with the "popular" abbreviated. Actually, I think I've heard "conventional wisdom" way (way) more than "popular wisdom." Again, off by an inch, but off nonetheless. Anyway, if you love this kind of humor, this puzzle is for you, and if not, not. For me, not.

Do people still know the song "THIS OLD MAN"? How the hell do I even know it? Where is it from? It's just ... there, in my head, murkily, from times of yore (for me, the '70s), but ... is it a nursery rhyme? I completely forget the context. It feels vaguely related to "This Little Piggie," which is not (as far as I know) a "song." According to wikipedia, it's a "children's song, counting exercise, folk song, and nursery rhyme" all rolled into one. But what is a "knick-knack paddywhack!?" Hang on ... Wow ... talk about things I semi-regret looking up:

And here I thought a "paddywhack" was something more like ... well, a LOVE TAP, to be honest. You know, when someone whacks you on your ... paddy? A paddywhack. So much nicer that way. Nicer than offal, anyway. But now you know. You also now know the terms NUCHAL and PAXWAX, so now you'll be prepared when they show up in your crossword on the 5th of Never.

Probably the worst thing in the grid today is OP-DOCS, both because it's inherently ugly as a name (just say it over and over, you'll see) and (more so) because it's such grotesque NYT self-promotion (33A: Nonfiction films with an editorial viewpoint, in a New York Times series). Do puzzles get preferential treatment if they hawk NYT proprietary content, like "THE DAILY" (which appeared recently) or whatever these OP-DOCS are? I'd sooner watch a Doc Ock doc or a reality show called "Top Docs" than watch something calledOP-DOCS. Actually, that's not true. I'm sure they're fine little documentaries—it's just that putting NYT-specific content in grids you submit to the NYT feels a little like kissing up. Luckily, the OP part was crossed fairly, though I struggled a bit in that area because I confidently wrote in FINNA at 27A: Planning to, informally (GONNA). I was like "ha, thought you were gonna get me with your slang, did you? thought I didn't know FINNA, eh? well guess what, I do know it, so joke's on you, puzzle!" But no. Joke's on me.

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THEME: FIRST LADY (58A: Title for Jackie or Jill, and a hint to the answers to the starred clues)— "first" words of theme answers can all follow the word "LADY":

Theme answers:

• GAGAABOUT (17A: *Crazy for)
• LIBERTYVALANCE (23A: *Title role for Lee Marvin in a 1962 western)
• LUCKOUT (36A: *Get seriously fortunate)
• MARMALADESKIES (48A: *Meteorological description in a Beatles song)

Word of the Day: Frank O'HARA(16A: Poet Frank who led the 1950s-'60s "New York School") —

Francis Russell"Frank"O'Hara(March 27, 1926 – July 25, 1966) was an American writer, poet, and art critic. A curator at theMuseum of Modern Art, O'Hara became prominent in New York City's art world. O'Hara is regarded as a leading figure in theNew York School, an informal group of artists, writers, and musicians who drew inspiration from jazz,surrealism,abstract expressionism,action painting, and contemporaryavant-gardeart movements.

O'Hara's poetry is personal in tone and content, and has been described as sounding "like entries in a diary".Poet and criticMark Dotyhas said O'Hara's poetry is "urbane, ironic, sometimes genuinely celebratory and often wildly funny" containing "material and associations alien to academic verse" such as "the camp icons of movie stars of the twenties and thirties, the daily landscape of social activity in Manhattan, jazz music, telephone calls from friends".O'Hara's writing sought to capture in his poetry the immediacy of life, feeling that poetry should be "between two persons instead of two pages."

The Collected Poems of Frank O'Haraedited by Donald Allen (Knopf, 1971), the first of several posthumous collections, shared the 1972National Book Award for Poetry. (wikipedia)

• • •

You know that feeling when you're humming along, just loving a puzzle, and then someone goes and dumps a bucket of TUCKET all over it? No? Well, neither had I, before today. What a tragedy. Gorgeous to gruesome in no time flat. When you're out of luck(et), and feel like "f*ck it!," bring in the TUCKET. The TUCKET (as it will now be known, with the definite article out front) has not been seen or heard from in over three decades. It was believed extinct. Or perhaps mythical—who even remembers 1992? But today, it returns from its decades-long hibernation / mystical journey and slimes its grim way right across my MARMALADE SKIES. "With tangerine trees, and [record scratch] TUCKET Surprise!" I cannot say enough about the monstrosity that is TUCKET. I want to put it in a bucket and chuck it. If this seems like an outsized reaction, well, first of all, hi, have we met? And second of all, I refer you to the opening words of this paragraph—I thought this puzzle was (otherwise) fantastic. The quality gap between TUCKET and the rest of this puzzle is a gulf, a chasm, it cannot be measured, you cannot see the other side of the canyon from TUCKET. I mean, I didn't *know* BANTU (as clued) (22D: ___ knots (hairstyle)), but at least I recognize the word (it's an African people / language group), and anyway, hairstyles are not in my purview—if you tell me something is a hairdo, I believe you, because my own personal hair style is NIL. But TUCKET ... TUCKET isn't just something I didn't know. It's something that should not, and possibly does not, exist. Is it real? Am I typing or still in a crossword nightmare. It *is* the 40th anniversary of Nightmare on ELM ST, maybe I'm in the middle of one of those situations, still asleep and being chased by Griddy Krueger, aka The TUCKET. Whether I'm awake or asleep, TUCKET remains very bad (please congratulate me on getting through this paragraph without using "suck it").

But before TUCKET, wow, what a beauty. I smiled when I threw down MCGRIDDLE and then *beamed* when MCGRIDDLE led to LIBERTY VALANCE! OK, yes, I did spell it LIBERTY VALENCE at first, as if it were a chemical or psychological phenomenon, but no matter. What a great movie: Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne and Lee Marvin and Lee Van Cleef and Woody Strode in the same damn western?! That's a lot of western! Before The Man Who Shot LIBERTY VALANCE, you couldn't get that much iconic western manliness on the screen at one time—science had not yet figured it out. But then John Ford was like "TUCKET! I want Wayne *and* Stewart! I'm putting them both in my movie, and a handful of other tough guys to boot, who cares if I literally set the atmosphere on fire!?" And then time passed and here we are, enjoying LIBERTY VALANCE with an APEROL chaser! (18D; Red alcohol in a spritz). Recommendation for APEROL lovers out there: ditch the spritz and try a Naked & Famous. I learned about this (apparently already famous) drink from my new favorite podcast, "co*cktail College." It's a sour with equal parts (3/4 oz.) APEROL, lime juice, yellow chartreuse and mezcal, shaken, up (in a coupe). Simple and delicious.

So this puzzle hits me with a sweet breakfast treat and then an iconic western and a colorful co*cktail ingredient and *then* hits me with my favorite modern poet!? (Frank "Don't Confuse Me With John" O'HARA!). I was all in. This is why The TUCKET was so tragic, but let's not revisit that. Back to the theme—it's very simple, very straightforward, nothing terribly tricky about it. I had the "Lady" bit figured out after the first two themers, but did not know what the revealer was going to be, exactly. In retrospect, FIRST LADY seems obvious. This is such a good example of how your theme does not have to be overly complicated. If the concept is tight enough, and especially if the answers are colorful enough, then you can do wonders by focusing on good old-fashioned craftsmanship. Speaking of old-fashioned, the other drink I just learned about that I still need to try is the Oaxacan Old Fashioned. No APEROL in there, but it still has the MEZCAL (only three crossword appearances? didn't debut til 2019!?) as well as crossword favorite AGAVE (nectar). Anyway, on the next hot weekend, I'm giving it a shot.

The puzzle played harder than usual because, well, TUCKET, but also BANTU took me a bit, and then I couldn't get either POMPEII(41D: Unfortunate neighbor of Mount Vesuvius) or RATTLE(46D: Maraca, e.g.) from their initial letters and ended up having to come back for that SW corner. First I just blanked on the city near Vesuvius, and then I couldn't spell it. Two "I"s!! I was like "well POMPEI won't fit and neither will ... POMPEIAN (!?!?)" so I dunno, man." As for RATTLE ... I mean, true, but so basic I never would've thought of it. Also I confess I get "maraca" and "marimba" confused, still (the latter is also Latin American, and also a percussion instrument, but you play it with mallets (something like a xylophone)). The puzzle wasn't *hard*, just harder than the usual Tuesday, for me. Also, much (much) prettier than the usual Tuesday. That is, until ... but enough about that. Let's not revisit that. Let's listen to some Gary Puckett instead.

See you next time.

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