Ascetic breakfast selection / THU 5-8-25 / Muddies, as water / San ___ Bay (estuary near San Francisco) / Halting speakers? / Noted silver-tongued Olympic gold medalist / Writer honored by Oz Park in Chicago / Resides a long time ago? / God honored by gladiatorial fights / Bike and Bike+, e.g.

Constructor: Dan Caprera

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium to Medium

THEME: "BUTT OUT!" (39A: "Mind your own business!" ... or a hint to the four sides of this puzzle) — four answers stick out (by one letter) on each side of the puzzle; these letters spell out a synonym for "butt":

Theme answers:

• ROILS (2D: Muddies, as water)
• UPEND (5D: Turn topsy-turvy)
• MOPE (9D: Be down in the dumps)
• PLAID (11D: Crisscross pattern)

• BRASS (15A: Generals and such)
• HALFTONE (30A: Musical pitch interval)
• AREA (49A: Field)
• FACET (67A: Side to take into consideration)

• CHAIR (55D: Something a waiter may pull out)
• SATE (63D: Fill fully)
• MENSA (58D: Sharp set?)
• DECOR (60D: Interior design)

• TAILS (13A: Coin toss call)
• UNIT (26A: Section of a curriculum)
• SENTRIES (46A: Halting speakers?)
• HEATS (65A: Qualifying races)

Word of the Day: My Neighbor TOTORO (37A: "My Neighbor ___," 1988 Hayao Miyazaki film)—

My Neighbor Totoro is a 1988 Japanese animated fantasy film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and animated by Studio Ghibli for Tokuma Shoten. It stars the voices of Noriko Hidaka, Chika Sakamoto and Hitoshi Takagi, and focuses on two young sisters and their interactions with friendly wood spirits in postwar rural Japan.

The film explores themes such as animism, Shinto symbology, environmentalism and the joys of rural living. My Neighbor Totoro received worldwide critical acclaim, and grossed over $41 million worldwide at the box office; the film also grossed significantly more from home video sales and merchandise.

My Neighbor Totoro received numerous awards, including the Animage Anime Grand Prix prize, the Mainichi Film Award, and Kinema Junpo Award for Best Film in 1988. It also received the Special Award at the Blue Ribbon Awards in the same year. The film is considered as one of the top animation films, ranking 41st in Empire magazine's "The 100 Best Films of World Cinema" in 2010 and the number-one animated film on the 2012 Sight & Sound critics' poll of all-time greatest films. The film and its titular character have become cultural icons, and made multiple cameo appearances in other films. Totoro also serves as the mascot for Studio Ghibli and is recognized as one of the most popular characters in Japanese animation. (wikipedia)

• • •

Conceptually interesting, but a drag to solve. Having to imagine letters outside the grid ... I dunno, it's not the most fun way to go through a puzzle. I didn't really care what those letters spelled out, I just knew I had to remember (16 times!) that the answers were going to come up one letter short. Is it cute that those letters spelled things? Sure. Is it a nice touch that all the theme answers are real words even with their (apparently) missing letters? It is. But the solving experience itself was not so hot. I'm just looking out for missing letters. A lot. All for a pun designed to amuse a child. Worse, I got the pun very early, and after you get it, there's really nothing left to discover. 

I guess it might have been possible for a solver to get stuck somewhere and then actually use the "butt" information to make sense of an answer, but the puzzle just isn't that hard. At no time did I stop to look at (or imagine) what the "missing" letters were spelling. I never needed to know. I didn't even notice that the missing letters were symmetrical, appearing in the same places on each side of the puzzle. That too might've proved useful if you got stuck. But there was no getting stuck today. Just the somewhat annoying experience of having to navigate a fussy theme in tight corners. The concept itself here is just fine—clever, even. But there's no excitement beyond the revealer. Just a lot of plodding work that makes solving the puzzle slower, but not really harder.

Looks like I made a small handful of errors, none of them related to the theme (?!). OCEANAUT before AQUANAUT (6D: One doing some deep-sea exploration). Is OCEANAUT a thing, it really sounds like a thing, but my software is red-underlining it like it's not a thing. Hey, it is a thing! It means ... AQUANAUT. Cool. AQUANAUT is too close to the hairspray to be useful, imho.

 
Anyway, screwed that up for a bit, and then had NOT GET before NOT SEE (24A: Fail to understand) and ABOVE before ALOFT (53D: Overhead). Also, because of ABOVE, I went with VIEW before FACE(T) (67A: Side to take into consideration). Absolutely no idea who this ALAIN-René Lesage is, although I feel like maybe I've seen LESAGE in the grid before, and if I look him up, I will have an "oh, that guy!" experience, let's find out ... [looks up Lesage] ... oh, that guy! He wrote Gil Blas, which should mean nothing to you unless you solved crosswords in the olden days, when you absolutely had to be able to answer ["___ Blas" (Lesage novel)], or, (more frequently) ["Gil ___" (Lesage novel)], though most often, esp. in the olden days, you'd just get ["Gil ___"]. Seriously, that's it. No context, just ["Gil ___"]. This was the kind of arcane baloney that pretty much defined the popular conception of crosswords for decades. Like so many four-letter answers (ADIT!), BLAS was just something you just *learned* if you solved crosswords. I'm not convinced that most solvers could ever have told you what Gil or Blas was supposed to be, or who Lesage was, but man, you would see this Lesage guy and his alleged book freakishly often. And there was a ten-year stretch in there (before my time) where the *only* clue for BLAS was [Gil ___]. Eleven times in a row from the mid-'60s to the mid-'70s, the puzzle used that exact clue (actually, there was one notable change, which is that the NYTXW stopped putting "." at the end of every clue sometime around 1966, so there were a bunch of [Gil ___.] clues in a row and then all of a sudden they turn to [Gil ___] clues) (I've written about crossword minutiae before, but this may be the minutest observation I've ever made). Perhaps my favorite part of this whole Gil + Blas + Lesage odyssey is I still have no idea what the book is about or who reads it. I understand invoking Lesage if, say, you 've got LESAGE in your grid, or BLAS, but it would seem to perverse to use him for GIL these days, and why oh why would you go to this guy for ALAIN when there are much more famous and handsomer ALAINs available?

A few more notes:

• 46A: Halting speakers? (SENTRIES) — I do love this clue. It reminds me of the Brady Bunch episode where Peter and Jan play SENTRIES in Hamlet, and they have to say "Halt! Who goes there!?" I think that's the entirety of their lines. Although now that I think of it, it's probably "Hark! Who goes there!?" And it might've been Romeo & Juliet, not Hamlet.

• 1A: 2022 Jordan Peele horror/sci-fi film (NOPE) — a great movie. Very movie-heavy today with NOPE and TOTORO and MIA Goth and "I'm Just KEN." I have yet to see a MIA Goth film because horror is generally not my bag. Which should tell you exactly how much of a "horror" film NOPE is (it isn't) (again, great great great, just ... not "horror," despite a gruesome moment or two ... that poor chimpanzee ...)
• 21D: Bike and Bike+, e.g. (PELOTONS) — this is a cult. Some of my friends are in this cult. To join the cult or not to join the cult, that is the question.

• 33D: Who "can get in the way of what I'm feelin'," in an Alicia Keys hit ("NO ONE") — I learned about this song from crosswords. "NO ONE" is best known to me as the answer I try to play in Spelling Bee every chance I get despite the fact that it gets rejected every time because it's two words, not one. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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___ Pendragon, father of King Arthur / WED 5-7-2025 / Scientist played by David Bowie in 2006's "The Prestige" / Sci-fi publisher whose logo is a rocky peak / Kids' items that can come in packs of 8 and 168

Constructor: Tom McCoy

Relative difficulty: Easy (felt like a themeless though?) (6:17)

THEME: Common phrases turned "wacky" by removing the H, as a tribute to PITTSBURGH — City that had the final letter of its name removed in 1891, only to be restored in 1911

Theme answers:

• PEACE MARCH (Nonviolent protest) becomes PEACE MARC (A farewell to artist Chagall?) when you remove the final H
• PUT UP WITH (Endure) becomes PUT UP WIT (Display some humorous posters?) when you remove the final H
• FIGHTING IRISH (Notre Dame team) becomes FIGHTING IRIS (Asset in a staring contest?) when you remove the final H
• DO THE MATH (Figure it out) becomes DO THE MAT ("Let's see that dance move where you lie flat by a door!"?) when you remove the final H

Word of the Day: MOE (Antagonist in "Calvin and Hobbes") —

Moe is a recurring character in Calvin and Hobbes. He is a bully at Calvin's school and seems to beat up or threaten Calvin every time he appears. Moe appeared early in the strip, and was immediately shown to be merciless and have no capacity for kindness (Bill Watterson describes him as "every jerk I've ever known").

• • •

Hi friends, welcome to another edition of Malaika MWednesday! I zoomed through this puzzle without even looking at the theme until it was time for this write-up. I saw the crossed-out clues and was like "I don't feel like dealing with all that right now, I'll get back to that later" and then by the time I got back to it, I had finished the puzzle.

I am a little torn on this one-- I don't typically like wacky "remove-a-letter" themes, but I do appreciate when they have a reason for existing, and this one is pretty cute. (Maybe I'm biased because I lived in Pittsburgh for four years, though.) I didn't know the trivia that was in the revealer, but it's fun, and it perfectly matched what was going on with the clues.

Yay, Pittsburgh!!

My issue, I guess, was not the concept, but the humor. I didn't think any of the wacky phrases were particularly funny, alas. FIGHTING IRIS was the closest, but the rest fell a little flat-- PUT UP WIT was my least favorite. It is hard to get a chuckle out of me with a remove-a-letter theme though, so I'll settle with being satisfied with the reasoning behind it. 

Elsewhere in the grid, we had some great long fill like FOOT REST and TOP NOTCH, and good medium-length stuff as well like PARKOUR and CRAYONS. I will confess that I have never seen the word ENMITIES in my life (I'm not dumb, I promise!! Just a weird lexical gap for me!!) and when I read through it, thought I had a mistake somewhere. Always good to learn something!

Bullets:

• [Hot chocolate holder] for MUG — There should be more hot chocolate, in general. Every bar should serve hot chocolate and it should be the good kind with melted chocolate.
• [Symbol in the Bluetooth logo, for one] for RUNE — I believe the rune is associated with King Bluetooth.... it sounds like I'm making this up, but that's what Wikipedia said
• [Sci-fi publisher whose logo is a rocky peak] for TOR — To me, TOR is what you use to browse the deep web. I've never heard it used in any other context, aside from crossword puzzles, where the NYT refuses to clue it in that way.
  

xoxo Malaika

P.S. A couple weeks ago, I gave a talk about crosswords, specifically about how they are edited differently by different outlets. If you are interested (or just want to know what I look / sound like lol) you can watch here.

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

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