Classic pickup lines, familiarly / FRI 3-14-25 / Truffula forest logger in "The Lorax" / Where hips do lie / Knight shtick? / Hurdles before some touchdowns / Bench press? / Snack made with celery sticks, peanut butter and raisins / Completing a video game as fast as possible, say / Subjected to a waiting game, militarily / Beehive state flower / French wine designation

Constructor: Brandon Koppy

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Rose hips (25A: Where hips do lie = ROSE BED) —

The rose hip or rosehip, also called rose haw and rose hep, is the accessory fruit of the various species of rose plant. It is typically red to orange, but ranges from dark purple to black in some species. Rose hips begin to form after pollination of flowers in spring or early summer, and ripen in late summer through autumn. [...] Rose hips are used in bread and pies, jam, jelly, marmalade, syrup, soup, tea, wine, and other beverages. [...] Wild rose hip fruits are particularly rich in vitamin C, containing 426 mg per 100 g or 0.4% by weight (w/w). RP-HPLC assays of fresh rose hips and several commercially available products revealed a wide range of L-ascorbic acid (vitamin C) content, ranging from 0.03 to 1.3%. (wikipedia)

• • •

This puzzle made me remember SUGAR RAY, which is something close to unforgivable (31A: Rock band with the 1990s hits "Fly" and "Every Morning"). Making me remember Shakira, fine, making me remember John Fogerty, great, but SUGAR RAY ... that is way too hot a dose of late-90s memories for me. It's possible that I'm (slightly) conflating SUGAR RAY with Smashmouth (one word? two?)—I've done my very best to memory-hole the entire turn of the century, one of the very worst times of my life (and, I would argue, a not *great* period for popular music). Actually, now that I look at the big songs by SUGAR RAY, they are, at worst, innocuous. They're songs you shouldn't like but find yourself humming and tapping along to anyway. 

Do people born after 1995 know SUGAR RAY? Shakira? John Fogerty? I don't know what people know. Half of what I know, I crossword-know, you know? Anyway, I'm more a DINAH Washington guy than a SUGAR RAY guy.

I continue to be disappointed with how poor the fill is in the puzzles of late—the non-marquee stuff, I mean. The stuff that isn't flashy but that you nonetheless have to spend your time thinking about, at least a little. This one's cleaner than some puzzles have been of late, but then a themeless should be cleaner—it has no theme to put pressure on the grid and compromise the fill. Clusters of ANE SOO ENDAT SAO just make me sad. I sagged a little at "EAT ME," which is an oldie, crossing THECW and CCS. Another day, another CRU, another ATT, another OSA. When the marquee stuff is sizzling, the shorter stuff seems less remarkable, but the marquee stuff was just so-so today, so ... yeah, I notice the bumps more. I really enjoyed "I GET THAT A LOT" and SPITTAKE and MIND-BOGGLING, and SCORCHER is great colloquial fare. But "YES, M'LADY" was a huge, recoiling wince. This evoked a certain "m'lady" kind of guy, a modern guy who thinks he's a gentleman but who's actually a creep. It's possible he wears a fedora ... cringe city. 

And speaking of (faux) chivalry, that clue on HONOR is godawful (13A: Knight shtick?). First of all, you're punning on ... nightstick? The thing cops beat people with, do I have that right? And HONOR is ... shtick? Really? So the clue is evoking police brutality while also being sneeringly cynical. Wow, OK. Bizarre, tin-eared, bad. I would've loved "WHO'S A GOOD BOY!?" but I hated the clue (21A: Question to one's best friend, maybe). I get that dogs are "man's best friend," in a familiar saying, but much as I love dogs (and I love them more than you, trust me), my best friend is actually human. Also, if you have more than one dog (as I did, once—RIP Dutchess and Gabby), then which one is "best"? The clue makes no sense in that situation. I wish the clue here had just leaned into dogness instead of trying to hide it, if only because that answer runs through the Very Worst part of the grid. SEGO? Again? And SIEGED!?!? REOS!?!? As clued, REOS is terrible (16D: Classic pickup lines, familiarly). REO is a "line" (of motor vehicle), but REOS are not "lines," just as FORD is a line of car but FORDS are not "lines" (they're part of the same, single line: FORD).  Again, I ask, why would you take your worst fill and give it a (botched) tricky clue? Why call attention to your own garbage like that? In case the clue makes no sense to you: the REO Speedwagon was a truck of yore (also a band of yore).

[Dutchy, Gabby, the goodest dogs]

Bullets:

• 16A: Hurdles before some touchdowns (REENTRIES) — "Hurdles" seems an odd word choice here. I guess reentry is a ... dangerous? ... transition period for the spacecraft, but "hurdle?" Is this clue trying to evoke American football somehow? It's not doing a very good job of it. 
• 18A: Subjected to a waiting game, militarily (SIEGED) — "Waiting game?" Starving people to death is a "waiting game"? This wins the Euphemism Olympics. (Also, again, SIEGED is just a terrible word, no matter how you clue it)
• 44A: Bench press? ("PUT ME IN, COACH!") — tortured use of "press." The idea is that the player sitting on the bench "presses" (i.e. "urges" "exhorts") their coach to put them in. I mentioned John Fogerty above. Twice. This is why. 

[Opening Day in 4 days!! (for Dodgers/Cubs, who are playing in Japan)]

[Opening Day in 13 days! (for everyone else)]

• 52A: ___ Locks, connection between Lake Superior and Lake Huron (SOO) — might make a crossword journey here next summer, when my wife and best friends and I complete our 5-summer 5-lake Great Lakes vacation odyssey. This summer is Lake Ontario, and then we'll finish things up on Huron in 2026. Then we're all getting Great Lakes tattoos. Hell yes, I'm serious.

• 40D: Truffula forest logger in "The Lorax" (ONCELER) — this book was not in my Seuss rotation as a child. I just happen to know the name of this "logger," somehow, no idea how. 

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

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Hits the exchange, in Wall Street lingo / THU 3-13-25 / Online shorthand for "offline" / Hit up privately on "the socials" / Sorts with unruly hair / Aired in multiple places at the same time / What un sachet de thé is put into / 1982 George Clinton hit with the refrain "Bow wow wow, yippie yo, yippie yay" / Big name in nail polish / Juggling chainsaws on a tightrope, for instance

Constructor: Rich Proulx and Simeon Seigel

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (Easy once you get the gimmick)

THEME: DOUBLE DIP (61A: Commit a party foul, in a way ... or what five answers do in this puzzle?) — theme answers appear to be inapt; to make sense of them, you need to "dip" down twice, picking up first the triangled square and then the circled square located just underneath the themer itself:

Theme answers:

• SIMULCASTED (16A: Aired in multiple places at the same time) (picking up the "C" and "S" from CSIS (20A: Collectors of forensic evidence, for short)
• MOPHEADS (21A: Sorts with unruly hair) (picking up the "H" and "A" from HASH (26A: Potpourri))
• FIRELIGHT (37A: Burning glow) (picking up the "I" and "L" from ISLES (41A: Cays, e.g.))
• CAP PISTOL (39A: Toy shooter) (picking up the "P" from "I'M UP" (42A: "That's my cue!") and the "S" from SOFA (44A: Possible sleeping spot for a partner who's in the doghouse))
• CARSEATS (54A: Items for babies on board) (picking up the "S" and "A" from CESAR (60A: Farmworker organizer Chavez))

Word of the Day: "ATOMIC DOG" (34D: 1982 George Clinton hit with the refrain "Bow wow wow, yippie yo, yippie yay") —

"Atomic Dog" is a song by George Clinton, released by Capitol Records in December 1982, as the second and final single from his studio album, Computer Games (1982). It became the P-Funk collective's last to reach #1 on the U.S. R&B Chart. The single failed to chart on the Billboard Hot 100 although it has attained a level of stature since then, partly due to having been sampled in several hip hop songs. // George Clinton's P-Funk reached its commercial and conceptual height during the late 1970s after the release of Mothership Connection in 1975 and a series of spectacular concert tours. Each of these concerts ended with a climactic descent of a giant spaceship from the rafters. However, as the band and their concept of funk grew, the organization became entangled in internal dissension, legal disputes, and creative exhaustion. "Atomic Dog" was the P-Funk collective's last single to reach #1 on the U.S. R&B chart. // According to Clinton, most of the song's lyrics were ad-libbed during the recording process.

• • •

Yet another puzzle where the grim fill really diminished the experience. So much muck to wade through. A good example of gimmick-at-all-costs, where an architecturally complex theme rides roughshod over the grid's overall quality. After enduring UVEA EAU PLO DMED IEDS ESSIE and then encountering a FREIGHT that made no clear sense, I decided that I did not want to spend any more time discovering the theme than I had to, so I jumped down to where I (correctly) assumed the revealer would be, in the SE. The short fill was easy enough to get that the revealer, DOUBLE DIP, soon became clear, which immediately made it clear how FREIGHT would make sense (i.e. by "double-dipping" and picking up the "I" and "L" to make FIRELIGHT). After that, there was nothing left to do but fill the grid. The themers held no more mystery; there was no second level to the theme, no thematic connection among the theme answers. The triangle ended up being essentially meaningless as a shape (a disappointment—why introduce a novel shape when it didn't have a novel meaning?). The "dipped" letters didn't spell anything. You just dip twice. Five times. And suffer through a lot of ugly short fill. That's it. [UPDATE: for the second day in a row, I totally missed a theme element—the triangles are CHIPS and they spell out CHIPS, and the circles spell out SALSA; very impressive ... sadly, my solving experience was still pretty miserable] There are some fun longer Downs along the way, but the essential dullness of the theme and the sheer volume of boring-to-actively-unpleasant 3-4-5s made this one less than enjoyable, on the whole.

["Just let me hold you by the ..."]

It's really the DMED / LCD / CSIS / AAS mash-up that ended any goodwill I might've had toward this puzzle. Oh, and the adjacent GOES IPO (6D: Hits the exchange, in Wall Street lingo), which ... yeah, bizness jargon, however original, is never going to be my thing (see also golf jargon, poker jargon, etc.), and this particular phrase just sounds silly. It's not like I don't know what IPO means (initial public offering)—I solve crosswords every day, as you know—but this phrase seems particularly ridiculous, and looks it, too. I am currently enjoying pronouncing it as one word (GO-suh-PO!). But let's say that that answer isn't inherently bad, just bad in my ears. Fine. But the short fill problem still stands. Also, we have UNCAST *and* SIMULCASTED in the same grid? Also, SIMULCASTED??? I would've thought the past tense of "simulcast" was ... "simulcast." Extremely cut-off NE and SW corners added another somewhat infelicitous feature to the grid (they're like separate puzzles, and because both have theme content, it seems likely that if you have any trouble with this theme, you probably had trouble there, particularly in the NE). But, again, the real problem here (aside from a not terribly interesting concept), is GSU NAS ABE EKE CHI IPAS MSN TAEBO (for god's sake!) and on and on. Just a parade of tedium, headlined by not one not two but three online initialisms: TBH IRL OTOH ("to be honest," "in real life," "on the other hand") (with DMED trying to make it a foursome). There really ought to be an online initialism limit. Say, two. Two is good. 

Bullet points:

• 8A: Delivery people? (MAMAS) — wanted OB/GYNS ... in fact, kinda sorta wanted GYNOS (is that an acceptable abbrev.?). Nothing cuing the slang of MAMAS in the clue. Not a fan.
• 22A: Hit up privately on "the socials" (DMED) — Why are quot. marks around "the socials"? Yes, it's slang, but you. may as well put quotation marks around "Hit up" if that's your logic. (DMED means "direct messaged," in case that's not a thing in your world)
• 63A: Last word of the last multiple-choice option, maybe (ABOVE) — as someone who frequently has multiple-choice sections in the exams he gives, I found it comical how long it took me to get this answer. It just wouldn't compute. "... OTHER?" (the "ABOVE" comes from "all (or none) of the ABOVE," presumably)
• 64A: Month with the newest federal holiday, recognized in 2021 (JUNE) — the holiday in question is Juneteenth, which commemorates the end of slavery in America. Look for this particular federal holiday to be rescinded in 3, 2, 1 ...
• 10D: Companion of Jason in the search for the Golden Fleece (MEDEA) — the looooove boat ... such a happy couple, I'm sure they're gonna do great ... 
• 34D: 1982 George Clinton hit with the refrain "Bow wow wow, yippie yo, yippie yay" ("ATOMIC DOG") — I was gonna dispute "hit" but #1 on the R&B charts is definitely a hit. It never made the Billboard Hot 100, but that "refrain" became universally recognizable in the early '90s for one particular reason ...

I'm realizing now that it's possible there are solvers who won't understand the "party foul" in question today. If you dip a chip in dip, take a bite, and then dip it *again*—that's a DOUBLE DIP, and that's a "party foul" (for hygiene reasons). That should do it, see you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

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