Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle

Ulta competitor / FRI 10-29-21 / Rhyming ice cream treat / Shield adorned with Medusa's head / NBA team coached in the '70s by Bill Russell / Virtuosa's display

Posted: 29 Oct 2021 02:53 AM PDT

Constructor: Aimee Lucido

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none

Word of the Day: "DOUBLE DARE" (51A: Nickelodeon's longest-running game show) —

Double Dare is an American television game show in which two teams compete to win cash and prizes by answering trivia questions and completing messy stunts known as physical challenges. It originally ran from 1986 to 1993. A revival ran in 2000, and the most recent revival ran from 2018 to 2019.
Hosted by Marc Summers, the program originally premiered on Nickelodeon on October 6, 1986, as its first game show. The series saw many adjustments in scheduling and titling throughout its run. Almost immediately after its debut, Double Dare had more than tripled viewership for Nickelodeon's afternoon lineup, becoming the most-watched original daily program on cable television. The program was a major success for Nickelodeon, helping to establish the network as a major player in cable television and to revitalize the genre of game shows for children. Double Dare remains Nickelodeon's longest-running game show. In January 2001, TV Guide ranked the show number 29 on its list of 50 Greatest Game Shows. [...]
As Double Dare grew messier, a green slime substance became more commonly used in physical challenges and obstacles. Slime was originally introduced on another Nickelodeon program, You Can't Do That on Television. Double Dare's high viewership led to greater visibility for Nickelodeon's association with slime and saw it featured in promotions for the network in the late 1980s. The substance proliferated further, including annual slimings on the Kids' Choice Awards, a slime geyser at Nickelodeon Studios, and slime-based segments on other game shows including Wild & Crazy Kids and Figure It Out. The relationship between Nickelodeon and slime still lasts on the network. (wikipedia)

• • •

Delightful Friday work. Huge Friday vibe. Tons of bouncy, original answers, very little that was obscure or gruelingly hard. From CHOCOTACO to MADHATTER ... that's a pretty good gamut. This is how I like OLDTIME—as an answer, not a descriptor for the fill. This is also how I like CHUCKLE—as an answer, not as the highest aspiration of a corny pun theme. There was one weakish section, starting near the middle of the grid, around RIAL/EMIRS (super common short fill), and bleeding down to the eastern edge of the puzzle, through GOA to ASNAP (50A: Easy-peasy), which I got easily enough, but only because I've seen this sort of wonky thing before, where a phrase (with indefinite article up front) stands in for an adjective. The real screamingly outlier part of this weaker section is SANSA. It's the only niche proper noun in the whole puzzle. All the other proper nouns, from HENDRIX to ANKA to "DOUBLE DARE," are well in the mainstream consciousness and accessible even by people who don't listen / watch / etc. It's always so depressing to see constructors go to the "Game of Thrones" well for names. That show was so rape-y I couldn't keep watching past the first few episodes, but now I'm expected to know every damned made-up pseudo-medieval name in the entire Stark clan and whatever other characters were on that show? Look, it was a famous show, so if you want me to know "GAME OF THRONES" or even "G.O.T." (which is weirdly in today's puzzle as a regular word) or STARK or NED or, I don't know ... is WESTEROS a thing? Yes. See, these are all things that non-HBO-havers might know. SANSA is not, Emmy nomination notwithstanding. I actually had to run the alphabet at _ANSA / _ASS because SASS is bizarrely misclued (33A: Ask "Why should I?," say). There is absolutely nothing SASSy about the question "Why should I?". It's an ordinary, if skeptical and somewhat oppositional, question. Still, just a question. I can see some petulant kid saying it defiantly, with a SNEER, but that kid knows nothing of real SASS, which is an art form and should contain at least a modicum of humor or cleverness. So I was slightly bummed that one square ("S") consumed so much of my attention / energy, because, as I say, almost everything about the rest of the grid ruled.

Had to wait on my vowel at the end of OTR_, but ONE G gave the "O" to me pretty quickly. I don't think DIPPY can ever be truly "endearing," but if you say so (18A: Foolish in an endearing way). I honestly don't know why bachelorette party-goers would be wearing SASHES (21A: Bachelorette party accessories), which tells you how many such parties I have been two (actually, maybe a couple—my friends, historically not Big on gender exclusivity). I just accept that SASHES is correct for some subsection of the population and move on. The stacks in the SE and esp. the NW are really really good. None of the longer answers are wasted in this one, and even a bunch of the sevens in the NE and SW are doing much more than just taking up space (SEPHORA and SNUGGIE both made me nod appreciatively). I found BRAVURA hardish, which is funny because I wrote it in immediately, off the BR-, but then I couldn't get the short cross VENA (56A: Certain blood vessel, to a physician) from the "V" so I pulled BRAVURA and wrote in BRAVADO (!?), which not only didn't work but didn't even change the "V," so I just went elsewhere and came back to this part, eventually discovering that BRAVURA was right all along (42D: Virtuosa's display). For VENA, I thought the "certain" in "certain blood vessel" referred to "vein" (as opposed to "artery"), but maybe VENA is being clued as doc slang for "VENA cava" specifically (it's the only VENA I've ever heard of). So maybe "certain" means a very specific blood vessel, as opposed to a more general category of blood vessel? That seems plausible. I just googled VENA and learned from the first search result that "Vena transforms Microsoft Excel into your ultimate financial planning and analysis software" so I have to go take a shower now. Remember: Google doesn't want you to find what you're looking for. It wants to generate money from ad sales. That is its sole purpose. The internet is warped. Ask ALEXA. Actually, don't. But do have a nice day.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

Picturesque town on the Gulf of Salerno / THU 10-28-21 / Behind nautically / Spanish equivalent of basta / Worshiper at the ancient Qorikancha / Old Apple Store offerings / Black-and-white movie effect / World capital with traditgional water puppet shows for tourists

Posted: 28 Oct 2021 02:07 AM PDT

Constructor: Alan Massengill

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: things a zombie might say... — ordinary phrases clued as if they related to zombies

Word of the Day: "Ode on a Grecian Urn" (34A: "Beauty is truth, truth beauty" poet = KEATS) —

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
       Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
       A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape
       Of deities or mortals, or of both,
               In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
       What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
               What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
       Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
       Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
       Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
               Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;
       She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
               For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
         Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
         For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
         For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
                For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
         That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
                A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
         To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
         And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea shore,
         Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
                Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
         Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
                Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
         Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
         Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
         When old age shall this generation waste,
                Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
         "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
                Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." (1819)(poetryfoundation.org)

• • •

If this is your thing, fantastic. As you can probably guess, it isn't mine. Groany, corny, and not that funny, though as groany, corny, and not that funny wacky wordplay goes, these themers aren't bad. BE RIGHT BACK doesn't have a lot to recommend it—pretty tepid, kinda gotta think about it—but the others are much more vivid, as well as more zombie-specific. I assume this puzzle is runny because it's the Halloween season, which feels like a season that did not used to exist, but I feel like we need discernible festive seasons more than ever, with much of the country still COVID-hampered and all of the country awash in so many godawful things. Maybe that's always been true but you just see it / feel it more now. Whatever it is, bring on the month-long Halloween season ("spooky season," I think they call it) and the two-month-long Christmas season, I give in, let it roll, just make sure I get my week-long Thanksgiving/birthday celebration in late November and I Am Good.

The fill is mainly short stuff, but it's noticeably cleaner than yesterday's, so I'm grateful for that. That bottom line, KIR NANOS STYES, definitely has a haunting "We Who Have Roamed the Grid Forever" feel, or, in the case of NANOS, I guess it's "We Who Have Roamed the Grid Since 2005," but overall there was not an excessive amount of tired fill making me wince as I solved. ABAFT and ICEES are shouting "What about us?" Yes yes I see you, you're harmless today. My only struggles today were around the first themer—this is true with what feels like a large majority of themed puzzles. You encounter the first themer early, when you don't have a ton of other answers in yet that can help you out; and if the theme involves trickiness, well then of course the *first* themer is going to be the one you (probably) struggle with most; you don't have the gimmick in hand yet. For me, today, the issue was parsing: I had BERIG- up front and could not make a word out of it. Then I got the BACK part and really Really wanted the answer to be a play on "Baby Got Back," only that would've give me "BERI GOT BACK," which left me wondering if maybe there was an archaic word for "zombie" that I just hadn't heard of before. Or maybe BERI is a famous zombie's name. Maybe he was named "Barry" when he was alive, but when he zombified, he decided to start writing it more sassily. Well, sadly, none of this fanciful stuff was relevant. It was just BE RIGHT BACK.

Stuff and things:

7D: Classic clown name (BOBO) — it's BOZO. It will never not be BOZO.
40D: "Spare" item (RIB) — had the "R," wrote in ROD ... you get it.
11D: "I really appreciate it!" ("THANKS A TON!") — oof, this answer. Like you (maybe?), I wrote in the much more common "THANKS A LOT!" and then just stared and stared at SLAT, trying to make make it make sense for 42A: Tackles, say (STAT) (an American football STATistic)
29D: Something that may be pulled in college (ALL-NIGHTER) — I did this precisely once in college. The physical consequences were brutal. As someone who now goes to bed at 9 and gets up at 4, I think if I tried to do it today it would literally kill me. Then with my luck I would come back as a zombie. Well, at least maybe then I'd get to meet BERI. And BOBO, who I think we can all agree is just an undead BOZO.