Design Theme for Moat if Used Soundly Crossword

Display of mentalism / TUE 12-21-21 / Ingredient in perfume and potpourri / Long thin strip used in building construction / Developer of the game Breakout / B or C of the Spice Girls

Constructor: Guilherme Gilioli

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (that one part in the SW really slows things down ... the rest is very easy)

THEME: SPOON-BENDING (48A: Display of mentalism ... or a hit to this puzzle's shaded squares) — the word "spoon" appears "bent" five times (see grid, above)

Word of the Day: SPLINE(46D: Long, thin strip used in building construction) —

1. 1.

   a rectangular key fitting into grooves in the hub and shaft of a wheel, especially one formed integrally with the shaft which allows movement of the wheel on the shaft.

• • •

The problem with this theme is that it doesn't yield any interesting answers. In fact, it ends up compromising the fill so badly that it's directly responsible for what is clearly the roughest, weirdest, most un-Tuesdayish part of the grid: ORRIS ROOT (!?) alongside SPLINE (!?!?!?!?!). The "spoons" are clearly to blame for that travesty. I mean, look at the rest of the grid ... and then look at ORRIS ROOT / SPLINE . Back to the rest of the grid ... back to ORRIS ROOT / SPLINE . You see how those two adjacent words are on a completely different planet, familiarity-wise, from everything else in the grid. Those are words you only go to out of desperation. And here they're *adjacent*—on a Tuesday, when everything should be reasonably smooth, and somewhat obscure terms are OK within reason, but not right up next to each other like this. It was like the rest of the puzzle was a 1/5 difficulty and the ORRIS ROOT / SPLINE part was 4/5. It was made somewhat more difficult by the KRISHNA crossing, which had a (clever) bear of a clue (45A: Hare ___). I wrote in BRAINED! But back to the "spoons"—there they are. And they do "bend." But not in any kind of way that is going to add enjoyment to the solving experience. Also, SPOON-BENDING is not a "display of mentalism," it's a con.

The plural of "elk" is ELK. The ELKS are members of a fraternal order (you used to see them in the crossword, in days of yore, as the BPOE). There's NE'ER any reason to clue ELKS as a plural of the animal. He who does so ERRS (I mention NE'ER and ERRS because they compound the unloveliness of ELKS corner). YETTO is among the ugliest partials I've ever seen. Looks like I have my friend Mike Nothnagel to blame for introducing that one into the NYTXW and from there into the crossword wordlist ecosystem. But that was ten years ago, and it's only appeared one time between then and today. Here are some alternatives. They're not all great, but they're all YETTO -free, and that ain't nothin':

I see now that some of these have duplications elsewhere in the grid (SON, YEN), but, I dunno, make it work.

What else? Oh, I wrote NOTABLY before NOTEDLY , mostly because I can't imagine saying NOTEDLY , ever (29A: With special importance). That's all I have to say about this puzzle. Good day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Title girl in a bygone MTV cartoon / MON 12-20-21 / Prompt action when things are unraveling / Hexagonal bit of hardware / Sound from a pug / Goal of phishing schemes informally / Andrew Wyeth portrait subject

Constructor: Anne Rowley

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (somewhat slower than your typical Monday)

THEME: COMMON THREAD (54A: What ties everything together, including 20-, 32- and 42-Across) — theme answers all start with sewing verbs:

Theme answers:

• STITCH IN TIME (20A: Prompt action when things are unraveling)
• HEM AND HAW (32A: Beat around the bush)
• DARN IT ALL (42A: "Oh, blast!")

Word of the Day: WOMBAT(46D: Outback animal) —

Wombats  are short-legged, muscularquadrupedalmarsupials that are native toAustralia. They are about 1 m (40 in) in length with small, stubby tails and weigh between 20 and 35 kg (44 and 77 lb). All three of the extant species are members of thefamily Vombatidae . They are adaptable and habitat tolerant, and are found in forested, mountainous, andheathland areas of southern and eastern Australia, including Tasmania, as well as an isolated patch of about 300 ha (740 acres) inEpping Forest National Park in central Queensland. (wikipedia)

• • •

You darn a sock, you hem a skirt, and you stitch a whatever, and you do it all with thread, so all the themers have "thread" in "common," COMMON THREAD , works for me. The problem for me was that STITCH IN TIME is pretending like it's a phrase that exists *anywhere* outside of the "saves nine" adage. There is no such phrase outside of the phrase "a STITCH IN TIME saves nine." Nowhere does it exist. So it is somewhat dishonest to clue it as if it is merely "prompt action when things are unraveling" unless you also add "in a familiar aphorism" or some such qualification. STITCH IN TIME was by far the toughest part of the puzzle, especially when crossed with LAY IN , which ... what is that? Sigh, I guess I know that one can LAY IN supplies (?) for ... whatever reason, but the basketball term is way way more familiar i.e. Monday than this [Stockpile] meaning. HALCYON (5D: Like the good old days) and PEPITA  (9D: Pumpkin seed) also felt a little more Tues. or Wed. than Monday, though I love both answers and mention them here only to explain why the relative difficulty skewed toward Challenging, not to suggest they have no right to be here. I did not know ETHYL at all. I had ETHER, in part because I read the "Antiknock" of 27A: Antiknock fluid as "knockout" ... but genuinely I don't know how ETHYL relates to "Antiknock fluid." I assume it's the chemical involved in the car fluid (?) but I'm always hazy on chemical answers, and when you put chemicals and car stuff together, well, yeah, I have no clear idea what's going on. Also did not know that pugs SNORTed ? Is that a breed trait? SNORTing ? I was totally unaware of that. Is it because humans have bred them to have gruesomely short (i.e. "cute") snouts? If you'd asked me to name the top ten animals I associate with SNORT , "dog" wouldn't even have made the list, let alone "pug."

I don't understand what ANAL is doing in this puzzle. You can do better than that pretty easily. I don't have a problem with ANAL per se (!), but I wouldn't use it if I could get something equally good or better in the grid without much trouble, and here you *definitely* can. Even leaving CURE in place, you can do lots of stuff. AGAR ABIT ATOM ... I like AGOG. The point is, if you don't have to make people think of assholes, you probably shouldn't. ANAL : use only when needed.

I don't mind ANAL in the grid but if you can do as good or better w/ other fill maybe do that? Esp. if ANAL crosses NUT? Just something to think about.

— Rex Parker 🐈🐾☕️🐾🐈 (@rexparker) December 20, 2021

The THEFT part of IDTHEFT was also toughish (Monday toughish) for me to get. I was thinking "goal" in terms of the things that were being stolen, not the stealing itself (43D: Goal of phishing schemes, informally). I think I confused Wyeth's HELGA with Ibsen's HEDDA Gabler, because I wrote in HEDDA (25D: Andrew Wyeth portrait subject). OBIES before TONYS , too (67A: Annual theater awards). Still, I did this in 3:08, which is a relatively normal Monday time. So maybe it's normal. I just don't notice so many sticking points, even minor ones, on a Monday. But again, conceptually this one works well. Solid Monday fare.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Big name in cast-iron cookware / SUN 12-19-21 / Long-tailed monkey / Chiwere speakers / Adjusts the spacing between as typed letters / Loud but friendly growl

Constructor: Laura Taylor Kinnel

Relative difficulty: Medium (11:43 on the NYT site, which has an interface I'm not used to, so I felt like I was stumbling around a lot)

THEME: "Season to Taste" — two-part cookie names have their first and last parts clued separately, and the two parts appear on either side of an image; these images turn out to be COOKIE CUTTERS(11A: This puzzle's images, in two different ways), because the image both "cuts" (i.e. divides) the "cookie" name in two and is itself a common Christmas cookie cutter shape (note: the cookie cutter image doesn't have any letter value in the themers themselves, but does in the Down crosses):

Theme answers:

• PEANUT [bell shape] BUTTER // RU(BELL)A (23A: Little tyke / Flatter, with "up" // 6D: It was eliminated from the U.S. in 2004)
• SNICKER [heart shape] DOODLE // (HEART)FELT (33A: Relative of a tee-hee / Bit of marginalia // 36D: Genuine)
• GINGER [tree shape] SNAP // S(TREE)T ART (43A: Pep / Onesie feature // 40D: Some graffiti)
• TOLL [angle shape] HOUSE // T(ANGEL)O (52A: Ring / Hold, as inhabitants // 48D: Citrus hybrid)
• THIN [star shape] MINT // RE(ST AR)EA (69A: Reduce in volume / As new // 58D: Where to go on a trip?)
• FIG [elf shape, allegedly!] NEWTON // TRUE S(ELF) (85A: Kind of leaf / Scientist born on Christmas Day in 1642 // 56D: Personal essence)
• SHORT [cane shape] BREAD // BUC(CANE)ER (93A: Possible result of getting one's wires crossed / Moolah // 77D: Pirate)
• OATMEAL [man shape] RAISIN // TOO (MAN)Y (102A: Breakfast dish / Fruitcake tidbit // 88D: More than enough)

Word of the Day: SAI (!?!?!?!?!?!?!)(93D: Long-tailed monkey) —

1. a dagger with two sharp prongs curving outward from the hilt, originating in Okinawa and sometimes used in pairs in martial arts. (google) hmmm, nope, gotta dig deeper, hang on ... here we go:

   • nounA South American monkey of the genusCebus in a broad sense. See synonyms undersaguin. (wordnik)

• • •

To Will Shortz's enormous credit, he single-handedly and mercifully put an end to the SAI craze of the 20th century. Looks like SAI appeared in two 1994 puzzles, which Shortz probably inherited from Maleska, and then poof, gone, nothing, nada, Never To Return ... until today. That damn monkey roamed the grid with impunity in the last century, with 66 appearances through 1994. And then: *zero* appearances for the next 27 years. And then, tragically: today happened. This makes me sad. But again, though the SAI -less streak has come to an end, it's probably best to focus on the 27-year achievement rather than the one-day failure. So kudos on over a quarter-centurysans SAI . It's something to be genuinely proud of.

This was one of those puzzles where I coulda / shoulda just jumped down to the revealer to get a leg up on what the hell was going on, but I'm stubborn, so I just let it unfold top to bottom. Took me longer than it probably should have to realize that the cookies were cookies ( PEANUT BUTTER doesn't really scream cookie if it's not in a clearly cookie context), and took me even longer to realize that the shapes were related to COOKIE CUTTERS . Not sure I *fully* grasped that until I hit the revealer at the very end. It's an impressively complex theme, involving a double meaning for "cutter" as well as a double use of the "cutter" square (mere image in the Across, actual answer component in the Down). It's true that you would not use COOKIE CUTTERS on most of these cookies, but that's not really the point. The cookie cutter shapes literally cut cookie names in two. It's wordplay, and that's all it has to be! My only real problem with the theme was that "elf" shape, LOL, what in the world? I mean, look at the grid, above, and you can see *exactly* what the image looked like on my screen, and what it looked like is a chick emerging from an egg? Some weird eagle? It's definitely avian. That square was the last thing I got because a. it looks almost nothing like an "elf" and b. TRUE S(ELF) was somehow hard for me to come up with. Normally when something is hard to come up with, you look to the cross, but in this case the cross was just some weird chicken image, so ... no help. The other images were all pretty self-explanatory, and visually discernible. But "elf," woof, wow. Also, I don't think of "elf" as an iconic cookie cutter shape. I bet if I go downstairs and look at our COOKIE CUTTERS , there's not an elf in the bunch. So the "elf" can take the long-tailed monkey and get the f*&% out of Dodge, as far as I'm concerned, but the rest of the puzzle can definitely stay.

The fill gets awfully rough in a few places, most notably the west, where there's an awful ENG ANAT RAWR STAUB (?) EYER (!?) avalanche. The less said about Cy the SAI , the better (yes, I named him, now say goodbye to him). But the long Downs today are real winners, and the theme is pretty complex and dense, so I can tolerate the patches of rough fill better than I might have under normal grid conditions.

I had AIRS before ACTS , AN "M" before AN "I" , TIA before AVE , and DANE before FINN (before DANE decided to actually show up later in the solve, with the same clue). Also had WET before SOT because WET is a 1000% better answer and also I can't believe we're still doing SOT (120D: Teetotaler's opposite). Had trouble parsing DR. FAUCI (because of the DR. part) and had less than zero idea what a JASON'S Cradle was (100D: ___ Cradle (maritime rescue device)). That's it for non-thematic struggles, though. Solid, solid Christmastime work.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. today is the last day to support the Kickstarter for Peter Gordon's next round of Fireball Newsflash Crosswords (2022!)—20 high-quality current events crosswords focused on names and topics that are in the news at that moment. It's a great way to keep abreast of current events as well as learn names / places / topics before they start showing up in mainstream crosswords. The puzzles are very doable, with any significant difficulty coming primarily from the potential unfamiliarity of much of the newsworthy stuff in the grid rather than from brutally tricky cluing. And in my experience, all the potentially unfamiliar stuff is very fairly crossed, so you're unlikely to get truly stumped. If you're up for an entertaining and informative solving experience, I definitely recommend the Newsflash puzzles. More info here.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Resort locale east of Snowbird / SAT 12-18-21 / Britain's first family of harmony per Brian Wilson / Modern-day put-down popularized by a 2019 TikTok video / Lead-in to a grave pronouncement / Challenge for a free soloist / Alternative to a Lamborghini / Champagne one of Drake's nicknames

Constructor: David Distenfeld

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: none

Word of the Day: BUGATTI(35D: Alternative to a Lamborghini) —

Bugatti Automobiles S.A.S.  ( French pronunciation: ​ [bygati] ) is a French high-performanceluxury automobiles manufacturer and a luxury brand forhypersports cars. The company was founded in 1998 as a subsidiary of theVolkswagen Group and is based inMolsheim,Alsace. In 1909, namesakeEttore Bugatti founded his automotive brandBugatti here and, with interruptions due toWorld War II, built sports, racing, and luxury cars until 1963. Since January 1, 2018, the company has been led byStephan Winkelmann asPresident.  In late 2021 the company will become part ofBugatti Rimac owned byMate RimacandPorsche AG.

• • •

This one was fun, if a little desperate to establish its "Youth!" credentials. It's neck-snapping to go from puzzles that barely acknowledge the contemporary world exists to something like this that's just throwing "Dear Evan Hansen"s and Drake nicknames at you right out of the gate. The worst (by far) of the attitudinal stuff was " OK, BOOMER ," a lazy agist insult that I really Really thought was behind us (23A: Modern-day put-down popularized by a 2019 TikTok video). If you spend a lot of time complaining about Millennials or GenZ, then you are a boring "in my day..." older person who would rather wallow in false nostalgia than try to understand the different social and economic situations of younger people today. *Conversely*, if your only way of registering disagreement with someone older than you is to pull out the most hackneyed of internet insults, first, your lack of imagination is disappointing, if not outright embarrassing, and second, don't expect anyone to empathize with you, ever. Generational generalizations are the lowest form of discourse. I think " OK, BOOMER " was amusing for about a week, just because of how fast it seemed to go viral and how many different contexts it spread to, but now the only people who use it are bottom-feeding trolls and unfunny middle-aged people trying to seem hip. Hacks. I think I'm much more mad at the laziness of the insult than I am at the fact of the insulting. If you're gonna hit someone, hit someone. For real. And maybe use your own words. This limp trollspeak that you're pinching from lemmings on the internet ... it's not working for you. It never was.

Speaking of resolving generational conflict, I like that this puzzle has " DIG THIS !" and " YA HEAR !"  kind of dapping there, touching corners like "Hey what's up? How you doin'?" Although maybe "YA HEAR!" isn't as current as it sounds to my ears. I may be thinking of "YA HEARD?" (roughly equivalent of "ya feel me?" or, less slangily, "Do you understand what I am saying to you?"). Whatever generation these colloquialisms come from, they liven up the puzzle, along with their colloquial counterparts " WELL, DAMN ..." and " CAN WE NOT !?" I do not understand what is "grave" about the pronouncement " NOW MORE THAN EVER " (7D: Lead-in to a grave pronouncement). Was sure that the clue was punning on "grave" somehow, and that the answer was going to be something you'd say at a funeral or graveside, but the grave doesn't seem like the right setting for this pronouncement, so I guess "grave" just means "serious." But "grave" is so much stronger than "serious," and anyway, I don't imagine this phrase having a particularly dire tone. If anything, these days, it's an overused expression that people primarily use ironically, in faux-seriousness. I just think "grave" is all kinds of wrong here. No other strong complaints, though I winced hard when the TEST PILOTS  (26D: Firsts in flight) went crashing into STERE ISRED . What a mess. ISRED in particular is real bottom-of-the-barrel stuff, so at least it's appropriately situated at the bottom of the grid with only the lowly ITSY for company.

More stuff:

• 26A: Vintage eight-track purchases, maybe (TRAIN SETS) — hard "boo!" on this one, but mostly I'm mad that my eyes somehow didn't pick up the "maybe." My reaction to getting this was "... eight!?!?! How big a model train room do you own???" Maybe there are simply eight track *pieces* ... which would then form one track ... I do not know.
• 36D: Furnish with feathers, as an arrow (FLETCH) — gotta believe this was a Chevy Chase-related clue that the editor overrode.

• 12D: Not-so-common extension (DOT NET) — this vague clue and Princess ATTA (?!) made the NE a *bit* of an adventure. I don't think of EDU COM etc. as "extensions," since they are necessary for the URL to ... work? I think they're technically known as TLDs, or "Top Level Domains." But I would not trust me to be letter perfect with the tech terminology.
• 48A: Challenge for a free soloist (CRAG) — a mountain-climbing term ("free soloist") that I only recently heard of, first from a movie called "Free Solo" ... and then from trailers for another movie, "The Alpinist."

• 27A: Stress specialist? (POET) — transparent to me, but I do spend a lot of my life dealing with iambs and trochees, so no surprise
• 39A: Pieces together? (SUITE) — a group of musical "pieces" can form a SUITE . Maybe this applies to furniture SUITE as well. Nice fake-out here, with a clue that suggests a verb ending in "S" ... but no.
• 7A: Scratch-off success (INSTANT WIN) — this is a lottery ticket clue

I give this puzzle something greater than NO STARS ! Enjoy your Saturday.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Portmanteau for a dumpster-diving anti-consumerist eater / FRI 12-17-21 / Popular Korean rice dish / Ancient land that includes parts of modern Iraq and Turkey / Mammal with four toes on the front feet and three on the back / Sophia Loren title role of 1953 / Fifth-century invaders

Constructor: Evans Clinchy

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: none

Word of the Day: BIBIMBAP(1A: Popular Korean rice dish) —

Bibimbap ( BEE-bim-bap, from Korean비빔밥 [pi.bim.p͈ap̚], literally "mixed rice"), sometimes romanized asbi bim bap orbi bim bop, is a Korean rice dish. The term "bibim" means mixing rice (burned rice at the bottom of the dish and cooked rice), while the "bap" noun refers to rice.Bibimbap is served as a bowl of warm white rice topped withnamul (sautéed and seasoned vegetables) or kimchi (traditional fermented vegetables) andgochujang (chili pepper paste), soy sauce, ordoenjang (a fermented soybean paste). A raw or fried egg and sliced meat (usually beef) are common additions. The hot dish is stirred together thoroughly just before eating.

In South Korea, Jeonju, Jinju, and Tongyeong are especially famous for their versions of bibimbap. In 2011, the dish was listed at number 40 on theWorld's 50 most delicious foods readers' poll compiled by CNN Travel.

• • •

"Am I ... MONSTER ?"

This felt like a Saturday. It wasn't terribly hard—maybe a little harder than usual for a Friday—but it just had that more plodding, leaden feel that I tend to associate with Saturdays (vis-a-vis Fridays). The grid shape was highly segmented, with largish blocks of white squares, so that feeling of flow that I love to experience in a Zingy Friday puzzle just didn't happen. You toil in one room, you move to the next, etc. The middle of the grid was by far the nicest part because you've got those longer answers streaking Across the grid, 1 2 3, and there's an alliterative quality to them, with all those "H"s (HOT ... HITS ... HOLY SMOKES !). But most of the rest of it felt workmanlike. Solid but not particularly splashy. Definitely felt like an older puzzle. Even the colloquialisms feel slightly quaint. FREEGAN is the one answer that really places this grid in somewhat recent times. Otherwise, it's a little heavy on trivia, with a cultural center of gravity that's more AGEE than ICE-T (who himself is now old, but at least alive). Whole puzzle kinda feels like VISIGOTHS invading ASSYRIA —that is, like something that might've happened a long time ago.

This one started out very promising with a delicious order of BIBIMBAP and BOBA , but nothing that exciting came along afterward. It's a little disappointing to see long answers wasted on stuff like ITTY-BITTY and (especially) ESTATE TAX —that is a long and boring way to go for an "X." And ITTY-BITTY is not only cloying baby talk made out of crosswordese parts (I'm looking at you, ITTY), but it's also a giant kealoa*, in that you don't know if it's ITSY-BITSY (better) or ITTY-BITTY until you get two very specific crosses. So yeah the longer Downs could've packed more punch. Fill-wise, again, it's fine. Your overcommon short stuff appears only rare, and in unremarkable places. It was unfortunate that I *finished* on the worst answer of the puzzle ( APRS , plural, yuck), but these things happen. Would've been cooler to end on GALAXIES , say, but your path is your path and it is what it is.

The only real difficulty I had was more frustration than difficulty. I came out of that NW area really itching to round that corner with some momentum. Screeching tires and everything. But instead my tires screeched because I had to come to an abrupt stop. You'd think getting the front ends of those long Acrosses would give me some rocket propulsion, but no. I end up staring at a THAT, which could be followed by anything, and a HOLY, which, surprisingly, could be followed by a lot of things. I wrote HOLY TOLEDO in there at one point, I think. COW, MOL(E)Y, MOSES ... there are probably more HOLY exclamations. Anyway, the point is, momentum stalled, buzz killed. I got going again pretty quickly, but no zoom zoom today. Thankfully, both the THAT and the HOLY answers ended up being strong. I was just itching to streak hotly, but despite the advertised HOT STREAKS , that did not happen. More chug chug than zoom zoom. Dutifully, I finished the crossword.

Some more stuff:

• 16A: Offline activity? (IMPROV) — hmm, as I understand it, in IMPROV , you don't have lines at all, so ... you're not really "off" lines, unless you're using "off" like in the sense of dietary restrictions, like "I'm off caffeine this month" or something like that. I liked this clue about as much as I like (most) IMPROV .

• 1A: Popular Korean rice dish (BIBIMBAP) — sorry, forgot to mention above that one of today's revelations was that in my mind I was spelling this popular Korean rice dish as three words, and also I was misspelling it BOP, like it was some kind of music or dance: "Do the BI BIM BOP!" (seriously, do it, it's delicious)
• 5D: Northern New Jersey county (MORRIS) — why would you deliberately make your clue this boring? What do I know from NJ counties? I had MONROE in here for a bit. "Family Circus" creator BIL Keane saved me, what a guy.
• 26D: Fast finish? (MEAL) — when you are done fasting, you eat ... maybe you eat a MEAL
• 46D: Some smears (LIBEL) — argh, fake plural! One of my many mortal enemies! Plural-looking in the clue, singular in the answer. By a logic which you can probably figure out if you think about it for a little (hint: bagels are involved), I (begrudgingly, angrily) had LOXES in here for a while.
• 30A: Tears (HOT STREAKS) — I assume they mean "tears" in the sense of being "on a tear," not in the sense of HOT STREAKS that run down your face when you cry.
• 40A: Pleasantly flavorful (SAPID) — who keeps inviting this word to the party!? You never (never) hear anyone use it in the wild, but every month or so (it seems), SAPID just struts into the room like "hey guys, how we doin'?" and you're like "ugh, SEE ME , did you invite this dude?" and SEE ME 's like "wasn't me, man ..." and then SAPID gestures toward his date and goes "You all know IRES , right?" and you valiantly suppress an eyeroll while muttering "yeah, hey, how's it going?" and then you go stand alone by the food table eating GENOA salami wondering why you didn't just stay home and read POE .

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Brambles with edible purple fruit / THU 12-16-21 / South American arboreal snake / Setting for Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night"

Constructor: Trenton Charlson

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: BOGGLE (52A: Flummox ... or a classic word game represented by the central grid of shaded squares, in which 15-, 17- and 55-Across can be found) — 4x4 section of letters at center of grid represents a BOGGLE rack, and you can "find" the theme answers (all synonyms for " BOGGLE ") in it simply by playing the rack the way you would in an actual game of BOGGLE , i.e. by connecting adjacent letters, like such:

BEWILDER (15A: Flummox)

BEMUSE (17A: Flummox)

BEFUDDLE (55A: Flummox)

Word of the Day: DEWBERRIES(36A: Brambles with edible purple fruit) —

Thedewberries are a group of species in the genusRubus, sectionRubus, closely related to the blackberries. They are small trailing (rather than upright or high-arching) brambles with aggregate fruits, reminiscent of the raspberry, but are usually purple to black instead of red.

Dewberries are common throughout most of the Northern Hemisphere and are thought of as a beneficial weed. The leaves can be used to make a herbal tea, and the berries are edible and taste sweet. They can be eaten raw, or used to make cobbler, jam, or pie. Alternatively, they are sometimes referred to as ground berries. (wikipedia)

• • •

[apparently there's some animation (?) in the app that appears once you've finished this one; if it doesn't work on paper, it doesn't work for me, but enjoy the post-solve animation if that's your thing!]

I enjoy BOGGLE . I used to play with my friend Kathy a lot, back in the Later Grad School years, when I would do anything, literally anything, not to be writing my dissertation (see my 2700-book vintage paperback collection, for instance). Kathy and I also played the Charlie's Angels board game, but that's another story. When Kathy got a job and moved away from Ann Arbor, we would play BOGGLE over email*—shake out a grid, send a representation of it to the other person, then set the timer and send our answers to each other when the time runs out. I'd forgotten we did this until this very moment. The early internet was Great. If I played BOGGLE online today, there'd just be some app that was mining my computer or phone for data it could sell to Facebook or something . . . Anyway, the point is I like BOGGLE . I also like crosswords. I don't (it turns out) so much like BOGGLE in my crosswords. This is a classic example of a "look at my architectural feat!" puzzle that doesn't really hold any actual *solving* interest for the solver. I don't want to play a game after I'm done solving. Again, the puzzle is not a child's placemat. It is a sacred space where cool *crossword* things happen. The grid has a ton of visual interest, i.e. it's got that grid, and all the longer answers running through it. But the answers themselves aren't that interesting—two of them ( SNAFUED, DEWBERRIES ) basically scream "I Have A Giant Wordlist In My Constructing Software" (see also TREEBOA ). They're not cool words, they're either f'd up versions of words ( SNAFUED ?) or compound words made out of words you know even if the results are not (in my case) words you know. The rest of the grid is just flat. Little heavier on gunk ( ABOU, EENY, ASSTDA, GSU, OBE , etc.) than I'd like, but essentially inoffensive. The main point is that conceptually, this is interesting, but as a solver, it was mostly irksome. Solving basically just involves building a platform on which I'm supposed to play an entirely different game that I have no interest in playing, and anyway it's less that you "play" it than that you look at it and go "huh, yeah, look at that." Total dissociation between conceptual complexity and solver enjoyment.

Only real tough part for me was MEWLING / DEWBERRIES , since I'd never heard of the latter and I did not think that babies "mewled." Or that cats slept in "cribs." MEWLING sounds like a cat word. I know that it's not, necessarily, but it sounds like it. Cats MEW and MEOW. In Britain (I think) they MIAOW (That's the title of an album I own by The Beautiful South, which are a British band, so I assume it's a British cat sound). Anyway, The MEWLING DEWBERRIES would make a great name for a Traveling Wilburys cover band. "Ladies & gentlemen, the MEWLING DEWBERRIES !" [the crowd whimpers]

I forgot ILLYRIA was a thing (43A: Setting for Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night"). My mental Shakespeare atlas has ELSINORE and the Forest of ARDEN in it, and a few other places (VERONA, I guess), but ILLYRIA slipped out of my memory basket. I also forgot HODADS was a word. I remembered HAOLES (white Hawaiians), because surfing made me think of Hawaii, but HODADS I plum forgot. It's an aurally ugly word. Kind of like SNAFUED (which in my head I'm pronouncing "SNAFEWED" because when I say dumb non-words, I like to say them fancy). My favorite thing in the grid is SONNETEER (18A: Shakespeare, notably), by far my favorite of the -EERs (take that, musket- and Mousket-!). I like this puzzle's ambition and creativity; I just wish it had been turned toward making a good crossword instead of a poor game of BOGGLE .

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

*now I'm starting to think maybe we played BOGGLE over the phone ... ? Hmmm ... stupid memory. At any rate, we played some kind of remote unorthodox BOGGLE , and we liked it.

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Abolitionist Thaddeus / WED 12-15-21 / Bacteria-inhibiting drug / High-end Italian scooter

Constructor: Jessie Bullock and Ross Trudeau

Relative difficulty: Easy (untimed, but I would've set a personal Wednesday speed record for sure)

THEME: SORRY, NO RETURNS (51A: Sign in some clothing stores ... or a hint to 19-, 25- and 44-Across) — theme answers are examples of things that provide "no returns":

Theme answers:

• BAD INVESTMENTS (19A: Speculations that don't pay off) ("no returns" on your investments)
• ONE-WAY TRIPS (25A: Journeys for people who are relocating) ("no return" tickets)
• SERVICE ACES (44A: Some court winners) ("no returns" of serve)

Word of the Day: ADELA Rogers St. Johns(40A: Writer ___ Rogers St. Johns) —

Adela Nora Rogers St. Johns  (May 20, 1894 – August 10, 1988) was an American journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. She wrote a number of screenplays forsilent movies but is best remembered for her groundbreaking exploits as "The World's Greatest Girl Reporter" during the 1920s and 1930s and her celebrity interviews for Photoplay  magazine.

• • •

Well either waking up from a stress dream at 2am gives you solving super-powers or this puzzle was way way way easier than your average Wednesday offering. I felt like Neo in "The Matrix" when he finally manages to perceive and control The Matrix. I couldn't miss. Everything I looked at, I knew. Crazy. I am way too tired to write very much, and I have a full day of final examinations ahead of me, and my cats are starting to go a little crazy wondering why I'm up at this hour and also why I haven't fed them, so I'm gonna try to cut to the chase. First, well, it was easy, as I indicated earlier in this paragraph. Second, it seems just fine, themewise. I don't really understand why this wasn't a Monday puzzle. It played like a Monday. The theme type seems perfectly Mondayish. Maybe the Wednesday pile just needed bolstering. At any rate, no one's going to complain (much) about destroying a Wednesday puzzle, so no danger in serving up easy fare like this. I hope you enjoyed your brief feeling of power. The theme is a basic repurposing theme—take a phrase from one arena, apply it punningly to other arenas. You have three answers that appear to have nothing in common ... until they do. The revealer reveals! Are there really stores that don't let you return things? I, uh, don't go to stores if I can help it, and certainly don't linger long enough to read signs, so I'll take your word for it. SORRY, NO RETURNS does like something a sign would say, so Good Enough.

The nice feature about this puzzle are the longer answers in the NW and SE. Oh, and then a couple more long Downs in the NE and SW. TEEN CRUSH is probably the highlight of the long-Down parade, but LOCAL PRIDE and LORD IT OVER are also nice. The only hesitations I had when solving this one came with the PRIDE part of LOCAL PRIDE and the CRUSH part of TEEN CRUSH , and truly those were mere hesitations, not actual struggles. I just needed a cross or two to get that sweet, "oh, right!" moment. ADELA Rogers St. Johns is the kind of ancient crosswordese that I would normally bark at but in this otherwise clean grid, she seems more like an old friend than a gruesome apparition. Thus ends the longest ADELA drought (2017-2021) of the Shortz era, or any era since the '40s. The previous ADELA drought record (Shortz era) was ... the last one (2014-2017). For comparison: ADELA appeared nine times in 1997 alone. And back then she had clues like [Daughter of William the Conqueror] (!?!?!) and ["Passage to India" woman] ( ADELA Quested). I used to get ADELA confused with ADELE a lot, back when the most likely ADELE clue was stuff like [Designer Simpson] or [Fred's dancing sister] (Fred Astaire, that is).

It took me a few beats to come up with HOST (43A: Large number), and I had a FOCI vs. LOCI dilemma in my head for a few seconds (59A: Centers of activity), but I knew what SULFA drugs were, so sorting that last bit out was no problem. I also balked at 21D: Shortest month of the year (MAY) until I realized the clue wanted shortest name length, not shortest time period. Clever. Overall, a very pleasant breeze, this one. I could've done without the spitting at 7D: Expectorated (SPAT), but otherwise, no real complaints. Take care. Seriously, take care: omicron is spiking like crazy here in central NY (see the news re: Cornell from yesterday). Other regions are having similar outbreaks. Please assume it's all around you and act accordingly. You mean a lot to me. Sorry for the mushiness. I haven't slept much. See first paragraph, above. Also, see you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Climber's belaying device / TUE 12-14-21 / Outed maliciously online / Military helicopters colloquially / Flag symbol seen twice in this puzzle's grid / Virtual citizen in popular video game franchise

Constructor: Tao Platt

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: NORDIC CROSS (61A: Flag symbol seen twice in this grid) — those two little black-square formations toward the center of the grid are NORDIC CROSSes , I guess. Also, there are four countries in the grid, all of which are in SCANDINAVIA (broadly defined) (17A: Northern European region), all of them clued by the fact that they have a NORDIC CROSS on their flags:

Theme answers:

• SWEDEN (25D: Its flag has a yellow 61-Across)
• NORWAY (32D: Its flag has a blue-and-white 61-Across)
• FINLAND (30A: Its flag has a blue 61-Across)
• DENMARK (48A: Its flag has a white 61-Across)

Word of the Day: GRIGRI(9D: Climber's belaying device) —

A GRIGRI  (often styled as GriGri) is an assisted brakingbelay device manufactured byPetzldesigned to help secure rock-climbing,rappelling, and rope-acrobatic activities. Its main characteristic is a clutch that assists in braking under ashock load. The success of this device has led to grigri  becoming acommon name for devices of this type. [...] The GRIGRI works by pinching the rope when it is moving quickly (like in a fall), making it anassisted braking belay device. This function distinguishes it from traditional belay devices such as aSticht plate or anATC, whose braking mechanisms depend entirely on the user controlling the rope in a specific manner to increase or decrease friction. Inside the GRIGRI, the rope runs along a cam; the cam allows the rope to pass if moving slowly but rotates when the rope moves more quickly, blocking further movement by pinching the rope against the inside of the device. (wikipedia)

• • •

Alarm bells went off early when I hit ERSE before even getting out of the (tiny, easy-to fill) NW corner:

That is the kind of crosswordese you absolutely banish from your grid if at all possible, and here it is in a simple corner, crammed in with somewhat less egregious crosswordese ORC and NSA . This is not an opening gambit to inspire confidence. And this time the alarm bells were not a false alarm. There's inexplicable AMIE in one tiny corner, inexplicable ORA in another. I know I'm starting with the small stuff, but it's the NYTXW, they should be sweating the small stuff. The small stuff is part of the puzzle, treat it with respect. Polish it, craft it, care for it. Don't just go "well, worked for 1996, works for me." It's depressing. As for the theme, those tiny black-square formations don't evoke much of anything. I guess that is what the crosses on those flags look like, but they look like ordinary black-square formations such as you'd find in any puzzle, so weird to build a whole puzzle concept around them. I did not know NORDIC CROSS was a term. Is NORDIC ... some NORDIC language for "tipped over"? I know of the Maltese Cross and the Southern Cross, but this one is new to me. Not hard to get, just new. The arrangement of country names is oddly asymmetrical, but since they're interlocking, I guess that's how it had to be. FINLAND is not always considered part of SCANDINAVIA , but sometimes it's included in a broad definition with ICELAND and the FAROE ISLANDS, and since the theme is really the cross on the flag, not the region, it's fine. Lots of places in the region feature the NORDIC CROSS on their flags, including the aforementioned ICELAND and FAROE ISLANDS, but the countries in the grid are the four largest, so you couldn't call the grouping arbitrary. Overall, the theme is a bit of a shrug, but it's not bad, and the cross symbols do add a layer of visual interest (however faint) and cleverness. It's really the fill where things go (ironically) south.

Honestly, there were only two things about this puzzle that left an impression when I was done, and neither of them was theme-related. The first was GRIGRI , which, LOL, what? It's Tuesday, where in the world is this term coming from? It was just a bunch of random letters to me. The last time GRIGRI was seen in the puzzle was twenty-five years ago, about two months before that famous CLINTON/BOBDOLE puzzle, and then it was clued as [African amulet]. This is truly not a Tuesday answer. But it's a colorful new (to me) word, so while I don't think it's Tuesday-appropriate, it's not a major offense. What is a major offense is the second thing about this puzzle that left an impression on me, and that is head-shaking, "what the hell?"-eliciting repetition of LOW. You've got LOWNESS on one line and then GO LOW ... on the very next line? How, why, what are you doing? I had LOWNESS  (27A: Feeling of dejection) in place when I got to 37A: Play dirty, so when that answer started GO my thought was, "huh, well, it can't be GO LOW , because LOW NESS is already in the grid, so what could it be?" But ... It Was LOW. Just ... repeated. Baffling. Two LOWs in a grid shouldn't just set off alarm bells, it should shut down the production line. You can't do that. Your ERSE AMIE ORA stuff, that's just ugly. But LOWNESS / GO LOW is unprofessional. Genuinely, flagrantly bad form.

DOXED is an ugly concept, and, more importantly, it's spelled with two "X"s, not one so DOXED manages to be both off-putting and in error. Fun. (18D: Outed maliciously online)

British ENTHRAL is just absurd, but not hard to get. Otherwise, there's not much more that's noteworthy about the fill. I gotta write two exams today, and while that might partly explain my mildly irascible mood, it doesn't explain all of it. That LOW dupe was a real LOW point. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Design Theme for Moat if Used Soundly Crossword

Source: https://rexwordpuzzle.blogspot.com/2021/

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