Essie competitor / TUE 4-16-24 / Pigment used in the Lascaux cave / Certain immature adult / Japan's national fish / "Gesundheit" prompter / Vodka brand in a blue bottle

Constructor: Adam Vincent

Relative difficulty: Easy (very)

THEME: MANBABY (39A: Certain immature adult ... with a hint to both halves of the answers to each starred clue) — men whose last names are baby animals:

Theme answers:

• STEPHEN FRY (16A: *Actor who played Oscar Wilde in "Wilde" [fish])
• RYAN GOSLING (10D: *Mouseketeer peer of Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake [gander])
• SAMUEL COLT (62A: *Inventor who patented the first revolver [stallion])
• CHARLES LAMB (24D: *English essayist who wrote "Lawyers, I suppose, were children once" [ram])

Word of the Day: BARBACOA (8D: Beef option at Chipotle) —

Barbacoa (Spanish: [baɾβaˈkoa] [...] is a form of cooking meat that originated in the Caribbean with the Taíno people, who called it by the Arawak word barbaca, from which the term "barbacoa" derives, and ultimately, the word 'barbecue". In contemporary Mexico, it generally refers to meats or whole sheep or whole goats slow-cooked over an open fire or, more traditionally, in a hole dug in the ground covered with agave (maguey) leaves, although the interpretation is loose, and in the present day (and in some cases) may refer to meat steamed until tender. This meat is known for its high fat content and strong flavor, often accompanied with onions and cilantro(coriander leaf). (wikipedia)

• • •

It's a weirdly gendered insult that I don't generally hear and certainly wouldn't use, but I guess it has enough currency to be a crossword theme, why not? It's the gender part that ends up being the one weak link in the theme, since all the animals are identified by specifically male terms ... except "fish." Fish is just "fish." No gendered term for baby fish, which makes this answer stick out more than it already did—FRY being a word I almost never hear except metaphorically, with the word "small" in front of it. If you'd asked me the word for a young [any of the non-fish animals in this grid], I would've known immediately, but FRY, uh, yes, that is a stage in fish development (between larva and fingerling, i.e. once the fish becomes capable of feeding itself, but before it's developed scales and working fins, per wikipedia) ... but, perhaps because they aren't generally visible unless you have a fish tank, and aren't particularly adorable, I would not have put them in the "baby" category. But fish are animals and FRY are young ones and STEPHEN FRY gets you an answer symmetrical to SAMUEL COLT, so there you go. Still, nothing "male" about it, so the MAN BABY theme you've taken pains to establish in all the other theme clues kind of falls apart there.

STEPHEN FRY made me laugh because I have no idea what "Wilde" is so, this being crosswords, I wrote in STEPHEN REA. This made me remember that Stephen REA appeared in a grid recently and a bunch of solvers got So Mad because the answer wasn't FRY. Let's see if I can find the puzzle where this happened ... here we go, April 4, 2024—the MARTINI puzzle. The clue was [Stephen of "V for Vendetta"], which both three-letter Stephens were in! So you can see why a solver might be mad. Me, I've been solving crosswords for over three decades (since the early '90s, when Stephen REA gained some fame because of his role in The Crying Game), so REA is just a reflex at this point. Unless you are *certain* about Stephen Fry, the three-letter acting Stephen is *always* REA—the name with the more crossword-friendly letters wins, that's the rule, thanks for playing! It's been that way since 1993—though you might occasionally see the term [Mens REA] (legal Latin for "intention of wrongdoing”) and if you're lucky, you might get a musical appearance from Chris REA. But today, OOXTEPLERNON, the God of Short Bad Fill (I mean, Crosswordese), betrayed me and failed to give me the REA I instinctively expected. He is a capricious god. A MAN BABY, some might say (some, but not me—I really don't want to make him angry) (solvers should make a point to honor him every October 30, for that was the one and only day upon which he showed his fearsome aspect to solverkind, way back in 2009) (the traditional offering is OREOs; you could try NILLA Wafers, but ... I wouldn't risk it).

I had BIG BABY before MANBABY, and thought that the BIGBABY / BIGBIRD crossing was some kind of ... thematic thing. But then BIG didn't work for the BABY answer so I changed it to MAN. I don't know if GOO over BABY is intentional (mens REA?), but it's a nice touch (GOO being half a baby sound). The only tough parts of this puzzle were the first names of COLT and, to a lesser extent, LAMB (having a Ph.D. in English means the 18th-century essay guy is a lot more familiar to me than the gun guy). Oh, and I had no idea about the N.F.L. coach, but crosses just blew right through him, no (real) problem.

[When you "finish" the puzzle but don't get the "Congratulations" message...] 

Bullets:

• 10A: ___ czar, N.Y.C. government position whose job listing called for "a virulent vehemence for vermin" (RAT) — tl;dr for sure. Scanned the clue, saw "vermin," wrote in RAT, the end.
• 65D: Deserving of a fire emoji, as a party (LIT) — I had HOT
• 64D: Essie competitor (OPI) — nail polish

• 25A: Starting point for a record-setting swim in 2023's "Nyad" (CUBA) — so presumably ... the starting point for a record-setting swim ... in real life? The movie was non-fiction, right? Weird clue.
• 56A: Pepper and O'Leary of classic rock: Abbr. (SGTS.) — [literal record scratch sound in my brain] Wait, hold up. I nearly blew right past this because SGT. Pepper is a gimme but ... O'Leary!? Did you ... did you really just gratuitously throw a Billy Joel reference in there!? SGT. O'Leary? The one who's walking the beat? At night he becomes a bartender? Trading in his Chevy for a Cadillac (-ac -ac -ac -ac -ac)? Wow. He's in one verse of the song, not even the title or anything. That is some deep Billy Joel commitment. Not sure who to blame for this one but I'm gonna guess ... Joel.

• 53D: Word in the title of Broadway's longest-running show (OPERA) — ladies and gentlemen, my sincere reaction to this answer was "Wow, Three-Penny OPERA ran that long? Longer than Cats or Les Miz or Phant- ... oh."

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Signature hats for Indiana Jones / MON 4-15-24 / Yellow fruits that, despite their name, look more like apples / Taiwanese tech company / Soybean paste in Japanese cuisine / Poster holder-upper

Constructor: Amanda Winters

Relative difficulty: Medium (normal Monday) (solved Downs-only)

THEME: AS ABOVE / SO BELOW (39A: with 41-Across, philosophical principle in which Earth mirrors heaven ... or a hint to the shaded squares) — bunch of ASSO squares (top two letters "AS," bottom two letters "SO")

Word of the Day: ASIAN PEARS (3D: Yellow fruits that, despite their name, look more like apples) —

Pyrus pyrifolia is a species of pear tree native to southern China and northern Indochina that has been introduced to Korea, Japan and other parts of the world. The tree's edible fruit is known by many names, including Asian pear, Persian pear, Japanese pear, Chinese pear Korean pear, Taiwanese pear, apple pear zodiac pear, three-halves pear, papple, naspati and sand pear. Along with cultivars of P. × bretschneideri and P. ussuriensis, the fruit is also called the nashi pear. Cultivars derived from Pyrus pyrifolia are grown throughout East Asia, and in other countries such as India, Pakistan, Nepal, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States. Traditionally in East Asia the tree's flowers are a popular symbol of early spring, and it is a common sight in gardens and the countryside. // The fruits are not generally baked in pies or made into jams because they have a high water content and a crisp, grainy texture, very different from the European varieties. They are commonly served raw and peeled. The fruit tends to be quite large and fragrant, and when carefully wrapped (it has a tendency to bruise because of its juiciness), it can last for several weeks (or more) in a cold, dry place. (wikipedia)

• • •

Hard to get excited about a bunch of ASSOs floating around your grid. Solved this one Downs-only and kept trying to make the ASSOs mean something, anything. Never saw the revealer, and so ended up very stuck at my very last answer: 27D: Thumbs-up equivalent. I had ... nothing. -IP, -SE, and -URL could've been many things. Then there was -SABOVE, and I figured it was probably AS ABOVE (some kind of footnote phrase?), but could not eliminate IS ABOVE as a possible answer (yes, it's terrible, but this grid isn't exactly brimming with great fill, so IS ABOVE seemed at least possible). Somehow my brain was eventually able to get from [Thumbs-up equivalent] to YEAH (a long journey), and I got the "Congratulations" message from my software, but yeesh, AS ABOVE? That seemed bad. Only then did I go back and try to make sense of all the ASSOs, and only then did I see SO BELOW (totally missed that while I was solving, somehow). I'm vaguely familiar with the phrase AS ABOVE, SO BELOW, and the puzzle seems only vaguely aware as well ("philosophical principle" isn't very evocative). I wish that phrase meant more to me, but what I really wish is that scattered ASSOs had anything pleasing about them whatsoever, from a solving standpoint. I kept trying to spell things ("is this ... a Sammy SOSA puzzle?"), but got nowhere. The problem with the concept isn't just that it isn't inherently compelling, it's that it also puts a Lot of pressure on the grid, and the fill ... buckles. Predictably. And that's *with* the two cheater squares (four, actually, because of symmetry—these are black squares that don't increase word count, added solely to make the grid easier to fill (today, above 62D: MAD and below 27D: YEAH)). But even with the cheaters: ESOS IPSO ESE OSSO ASUS (!?), ATAD ASEA ADOS AESOP SQIN CPL ... that's a lot to take. And the longer answers don't add nearly enough color to offset the short-fill unpleasantness.

That last answer (YEAH) was the only one that put up any kind of fight. I had some trouble with CLEAVE (21D: Split, as with an axe), largely because I couldn't infer the first letter ("C") because I couldn't think of *any* letter that could acceptably fill the blank at -PL (21A). I know that NPL is the National Puzzlers' League, but that seemed way too niche, even for the puzzle-happy NYTXW. I ran the alphabet and got nothing. Which means I didn't run it carefully enough—CPL is a standard military abbr. ("corporal"), and the only -PL possibility there is. I thought maybe PPL stood for "people" ... does it? Looks like it does. Also "parts per liter" and "participle." Good to know! Where else did I get slowed down on the Downs-only journey? Honestly, nowhere. ASIAN PEARS went in once I inferred the "AS," SOLAR PANELS went in once I inferred the "SO." I had a few moments of scrambling around 52D: Fix, as a printer, assuming the first two letters were going to be "RE-". Oh, and ASUS, yikes, haven't seen that in a while. Whoa, I haven't seen it *ever* in a NYTXW—it's a debut! That's a debut that's hard to celebrate, and an unfortunate corporate name, generally. After ACER, I'm all out of four-letter A-starting tech companies. I don't really get why "sign" was added to the clue at 36D: "Credit cards only" sign ("NO CASH"). "Credit cards only" is the equivalent of "NO CASH." What's "sign" got to do with it. One phrase could be a "sign" as well as the other. "Sign" is just muddling things, and ruining the equivalency. Bizarre cluing choice. Also, a very tiny matter. Gonna sign off before I get even further into minutiae and subminutiae. See you tomorrow. Oh, and go see La Chimera, it is the best film I've seen in a while. 

OK, bye!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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