Roman guardian spirit / THU 4-4-25 / Anti-jaywalking directive / One getting in online debates, colloquially / Greek goddess who is the equivalent of the Roman Pax / Its flag was solid red with a white elephant / Hair color blending technique / Pinched pasta shape

Constructor: Karen Steinberg

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: LAR (6D: Roman guardian spirit) —

Lares (/ˈlɛəriːz, ˈleɪriːz/ LAIR-eez, LAY-reez, Latin: [ˈlareːs]; archaic lasēs, singular lar) were guardian deities in ancient Roman religion. Their origin is uncertain; they may have been hero-ancestors, guardians of the hearth, fields, boundaries, or fruitfulness, or an amalgam of these.

Lares were believed to observe, protect, and influence all that happened within the boundaries of their location or function. The statues of domestic Lares were placed at the table during family meals; their presence, cult, and blessing seem to have been required at all important family events. [...]

Because of these associations, Lares are sometimes categorised as household gods, but some had much broader domains. Roadways, seaways, agriculture, livestock, towns, cities, the state, and its military were all under the protection of their particular Lar or Lares. Those who protected local neighbourhoods (vici) were housed in the crossroad shrines (Compitalia), which served as a focus for the religious, social, and political lives of their local, overwhelmingly plebeian communities. Their cult officials included freedmen and slaves, otherwise excluded by status or property qualifications from most administrative and religious offices.

Compared to Rome's major deities, Lares had limited scope and potency, but archaeological and literary evidence attests to their central role in Roman identity and religious life. By analogy, a homeward-bound Roman could be described as returning ad Larem (to the Lar). (wikipedia)

• • •

So ... LAR. It's been a minute. It's been over four years, actually. Look, I'll get to the good stuff in a second, but LAR is bugging the hell out of me because I cannot for the life of me understand keeping LAR in any grid except under the most extreme circumstances, and I don't think this particular grid qualifies as "extreme." LAR is a "Tear It Down" kind of word. It is the household god of Crosswordese, which I define as "short fill, largely arcane, that died a pretty hard death the moment Shortz took over, but still annoyingly hangs around because its particular letter combinations prove too tempting, at times, in tough spots." You wanna see a crossword answer die a hard death in real time (well, in time, anyway). Check out this LAR timeline (the blue is when the Shortz Era begins):

[xwordinfo]

And yet, LAR ... not dead enough, apparently. Man, 1951. Fourteen LARs! What a time to be alive. At least it's not LER, I guess (a Norse sea god? Maybe? Hang on ... gah, Celtic! Celtic sea god! So close... LER has been M.I.A. since 2013, but somewhere out there, the Cult of LER awaits his return...). Reading about LAR was actually interesting to me, and yet I still think it's a "better to tear your grid down and try again" kind of answer. I'll eat all of my hats if it's not the least familiar thing in the grid, on average, for most solvers, by far. It could so easily be OAR, except ... you've got OARS sitting right there, practically adjacent to it. Still, I think you tear the non-15 stuff out, down to NSF and up to the far NW if you have to, just to get rid of LAR. If you put LAR in your grid, expect that to be one of the things, if not the primary thing, that solvers remember. 

(We now join our LAR-less portion of the program, already in progress.) ... latticework of 15s! A sparkling, solid foundation for an extremely whooshy grid. True, I have never heard the phrase CROSS AT THE GREEN (55A: Anti-jaywalking directive). I mean, I have crossed when the light turned green, of course, so I have crossed on green, and I have crossed at the corner, where the light is, but CROSS AT THE GREEN must be some kind of city-specific directive that just missed me. My most memorable street-crossing moment happened in Edinburgh in 1989, when one of my friends (Sarah?) stepped off the curb too soon, or didn't look the right way, or something, and had to jump back to the curb to avoid getting hit by traffic, which prompted the tiniest old man to walk up to her, point to the "Don't Walk" sign, and say (in the most Scottish accent possible): "Ye 'ave to wait for the wee man!" (you know, the little green walking guy that signifies "walk"). I hear that guy's voice in my head every time I'm waiting to cross the street now. 

[the wee man]

Anyway, CROSS AT THE GREEN did nothing for me, but the rest of the 15s were wonderful, running the gamut from the quaintly colloquial (USING THE OLD BEAN) (11D: Thinking hard, informally) to the currently colloquial (KEYBOARD WARRIOR) (17A: One getting in online debates, colloquially) and making stops at all points in between. Those answers really propelled me through the grid, getting me into all corners of the grid with relative ease. Look at this opening:

Exploding out of the gate in two directions! Amazing feeling. Maybe too amazing, as the puzzle was over a little quicker than I'd have liked, and there wasn't really much resistance to speak of, but it was fun while it lasted. The toughest part for me today was parsing the central 15: "I CALL 'EM AS I SEE 'EM" (35A: "Lemme be straight with you"). I had "ICALLE-" and ??? That "E" was baffling. Could not see at that point that the "TH" had been elided from "THEM" to produce "'EM." I also thought ISM was IST (28D: Ending with real or social), but even "M" would've probably still left me shrugging. But all I had to do was move on and come back to this answer, and eventually it filled itself right in. Otherwise ... no issues. I no-looked AI WEIWEI! Exhilarating. Seems unlikely, I know, but I took one look at the improbable letter pattern, --WEI--I, and just knew. I did read the clue after I'd entered the answer, just to confirm, but turns out I didn't need to. I still remember putting AI WEIWEI in a Sunday-sized puzzle I co-wrote many years ago, and having it rejected for obscurity. And now here we are. I don't know that AI WEIWEI is any more popular now than he was then. Maybe. Either way, I always enjoy seeing him. 

["Map of China"]

Had three different single-letter hesitations today, the "M" (not "T") in ISM, the terminal "E" (not "A") in IRENE (30D: Greek goddess who is the equivalent of the Roman Pax), and the "D" (not "E") in USING THE OLD BEAN ("OLE" seemed very plausible). Unless proper nouns gave you trouble, I don't see any other real trouble spots today.

More more more:

• 1A: It may lead to a second opinion ("ALSO ...") — hard, and fun(ny).
• 27A: Boorish sorts (SWINE) — good misdirection here. Thought "boorish" would be figurative. Maybe it still is, actually. We call people "SWINE," sure, why not? Point is, I penciled in a terminal "S" for this plural, and then eventually had to retract it.
• 39A: Turndown? (DOGEAR) — when you "turn down" the corner of a page in a book (in LIEU of a bookmark), you DOGEAR the page.
• 33A: Grad. student fellowship funder (NSF) — hard to know from day to day if any of these federal agencies are still functioning any more. Looks like there've been massive cuts to both the National Science Foundation and the NIH (National Institutes of Health). This is great news for, you know, haters of scientific progress and high-mortality enthusiasts. 
• 34D: High ___ (JINKS) — weird. I thought this was one word. Also, I wanted to spell this JINX. But no: though it's sometimes (apparently) spelled "hi-jinks," it really is two words, spelled just as it appears in the puzzle. 

• 49D: "___ Doone," R.D. Blackmore romance (LORNA) — LAR's favorite novel! Classic crosswordese (both LORNA and DOONE). The way the clue is laid out in my paper print-out of the puzzle, the first line of this clue reads "___ Doone," R.D." and my first thought was "There's a sequel ... where LORNA gets a degree? What's an 'R.D.'? Registered Dietician?" Lorna Doone, Registered Dietician sounds thrilling, in a perversely boring kind of way. Would read. Would LORNA Doone, R.D. recommend LORNA Doone cookies? You'll have to read to find out!

I'm off to Stamford today for the Crossword Tournament. Eli's got tomorrow and Sunday covered. See you Monday.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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Printer resolution spec / THU 4-3-25 / "First Blood" tough guy / Big attraction at MoMA / Words on a U-Haul storage container / Lead-in to many a side thought / Fifth-century invader of Europe / 1980s arcade game with a cube-jumping character / Soft drink rival of Mug / Hounds with fine, silky hair / Market checkout option, for short / Country ruled by the al-Khalifa royal family since 1783 / Agent Smith's foe in "The Matrix"

Constructor: Hanh Huynh

Relative difficulty: Easy (might take a little longer to enter all the special squares, but it's still easy to solve)

THEME: STAR-CROSSED (62A: Ill-fated ... or a hint to six squares in this puzzle) — a rebus puzzle where you have to enter a "star" in six squares—the "star" functions as a symbol in the Downs (specifically, an asterisk), and as letters "STAR" in the Acrosses:

Theme answers (ACROSS):

• CO-[STAR] (9A: One sharing the credits?)
• THE [STAR]RY NIGHT (17A: Big attraction at MoMA)
• RE[ST AR]EA (28A: Stop at the side of the road)
• NON-[STAR]TER (36A: Idea that's dead on arrival)
• CU[STAR]D (47A: Egg tart filling)
• LO[ST AR]TS (48A: Using cursive and writing thank you notes, e.g.)

Theme answers (DOWN):

• *NSYNC (11D: Band with the 2000 11x platinum album "No Strings Attached")
• Q*BERT (13D: 1980s arcade game with a cube-jumping character)
• M*A*S*H (25D: Show with the most-watched episode in scripted TV history)
• E*TRADE (40D: Online investment firm founded in 1991)

Word of the Day: DPI (23D: Printer resolution spec) —

Dots per inch (DPI, or dpi) is a measure of spatial printing, video or image scanner dot density, in particular the number of individual dots that can be placed in a line within the span of 1 inch (2.54 cm). Similarly, dots per millimetre (d/mm or dpmm) refers to the number of individual dots that can be placed within a line of 1 millimetre (0.039 in). (wikipedia)

• • •

I feel like I just solved a puzzle (in the past week?) where I was supposed to count an asterisk as a "star" ... oh yeah, Sunday, look at that. The * is having a good week, I guess. As for this puzzle, the M*A*S*H bit is kind of spectacular. Like, "oh, do you like theme!? Here ... have some!" It's got the marquee position, too, because it knows it's the best thing about the puzzle—maybe the puzzle's entire reason for being (look, I know what "raison d'être" means, I just can't bring myself to use it). The doubleness of the theme is also provocative, with the puzzle squeezing two different meanings out of one little "*": it's a visual component of the puzzle in the Downs, but a stand-in for letters ("STAR") in the Across. STAR ... CROSSED. Yes, that works. Still, though, the puzzle is pretty one-note, and (once you discover the gimmick) neither particularly challenging nor particularly exciting. And the fill, yeesh. The short fill in particular is a bit musty today. I'd barely started and already had EBT and SRO in place, which definitely set off the "uh oh" alarm, and before I'd even really left the top-left portion of the grid, BAHT, AVI, and two-M UMM and DPI had joined the gunky get-together. DPI was the answer that seemed most grievous. It's a real spec, but while solving, in real time, I could not remember what the letters stood for ... scratch that, I couldn't remember what the first letter stood for, which meant I was not 100% certain I had it right, and since DAZE could easily have been HAZE, given its clue (23A: Foggy state), I had to make a "D" v. "H" call there. Thankfully, "H" seemed extremely wrong, and "D" rang a bell, so I wasn't too too worried, but boo to ugly initialisms, that's for sure. They can get you into trouble. Anyway, EFT PAREN "ADIA" etc., the fill on this one verged on actively bad at points, without much (beyond the themers) to counteract it.

If you went to arcades (or in my case, local pizza parlors, or Chuck E. Cheese, or 7-11, or ...) in the '80s, or you had a home video game system (in our case, Intellivision), then there's a good chance you got the theme concept very early, because Q*BERT was a Thing for a few years there. Not really my thing (my thing being 1. Donkey Kong, 2. Frogger), but you got to know the adjacent games, wherever and whatever you were playing. The thing about Q*BERT is that it has only five letters, but today's answer was six, so .... "they're doing an asterisk bit, probably." In fact. And I've seen THE [STAR]RY NIGHT, just in the past couple of years, I think (maybe during that Van Gogh "Cypresses" exhibit at the Met?), so bam bam, theme sorted. Of course at that point, I didn't know if maybe I'd be dealing with other typographical symbols, but I ran into M*A*S*H real fast, and so knew that it was all stars from there on out.

The one big revelation of the day was that *NSYNC starts with an asterisk! I definitely would've placed that thing between the "N" and the "S"—in fact, I did place that thing between the "N" and the "S," which caused the only real struggle I experienced in the entire puzzle. I was desperately trying to think what [Fifth-century invader of Europe] could end in "-STAR." Never heard of a HASTAR ... are they related to the Visigoths? I wanted HUN, of course, but the "*" was in the way. But once I got the "H" from CHEER ON, I entertained the idea that maybe I had the "*" in the wrong place, wrote in HUN and whoosh, the whole corner fell into place. Smooth sailing the rest of the way. 

[58D: Great ___]

Assorted notes:

• 26A: Lead-in to many a side thought (PAREN) — triply had for me. First, it was in the NE corner, which, as we've established, I was already struggling with because of the erroneous N*SYNC. Second, "Lead-in" made me think it was going to be a spoken phrase, like "by the way" or "fun fact" or something. And third, PAREN? Who says / writes that? It's like a typo for "PARENT" or "KAREN"
• 47A: Egg tart filling (CU[STAR]D) — fun fact: CURD and CU[*]D are both things one might find in a tart, and both are four letters long—sharing three letters! No CURDs in an egg tart, though, so it shouldn't have been as confusing to me as it was—only briefly confusing, though, as E*TRADE came to the rescue very quickly.
• 70A: #23 of 24 (PSI) — the 23rd of 24 letters of the Greek alphabet, the order of which I will someday commit to memory. Someday. Gotta have goals.
• 6D and 49D: Certain "Top Gun" jet(s) (MIGS / TOMCAT) — MIGS was a cinch. I was less sure about TOMCAT (esp. as TOMCruise was the star of that movie, and that just seemed a little too on-the-nose). I saw Top Gun on the first (double) date I ever went on. It's possible she did not consider it a date, but I was sitting next to a girl I liked, so ... date! Anyway, R.I.P. Val Kilmer.

And, since it was filmed at my alma mater, one more:

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook]

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