Japanese aesthetic that embraces imperfection / SAT 5-4-24 / Iconic line on 1950s TV / Altos might follow this / Vice President Harris's family nickname / Singles material, say

Constructor: Jacob McDermott

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: WABI-SABI (35D: Japanese aesthetic that embraces imperfection) —

In traditional Japanese aesthetics, wabi-sabi (侘び寂び) is a world view centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of appreciating beauty that is "imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete" in nature. It is prevalent in many forms of Japanese art.

Wabi-sabi is a composite of two interrelated aesthetic concepts, wabi(侘) and sabi (寂). According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, wabi may be translated as "subdued, austere beauty," while sabi means "rustic patina." Wabi-sabi is derived from the Buddhist teaching of the three marks of existence (三法印, sanbōin), specifically impermanence(無常, mujō), suffering (苦, ku) and emptiness or absence of self-nature(空, kū).

Characteristics of wabi-sabi aesthetics and principles include asymmetry, roughness, simplicity, economy, austerity, modesty, intimacy, and the appreciation of both natural objects and the forces of nature. (wikipedia)

• • •

I'm calling this one "Easy-Medium" but honestly that "Medium" part is there solely because of two answers in particular, two names, that I didn't know at all, and I had to work around them, and I figured others might have to as well, and maybe this would add some difficulty to the overall experience, and so ... "Easy-Medium." The thing about MOMALA and WABI-SABI is that they weren't just names I didn't know, they were names in which I had no real ability to infer any of the letters—that is, until I got the WABI- part. For some reason, that made me think WABI-SABI, but that sounded like possibly some nonsense Japanese that a dumb American would make up, so tested the crosses before putting it in. WABI-SABI is obviously a term that is getting used carelessly by non-Japanese speakers; otherwise, why would wikipedia warn me "Not to be confused with wasabi"? Hey, wikipedia, you're not the boss of me. If I wanna apply WABI-SABI to my tuna roll, I'm gonna apply WABI-SABI to my tuna roll. Embrace the many imperfections of GAS STATION SUSHI, I say. It's probably the only way you're going to enjoy it. (For more on GAS STATION SUSHI, see yesterday's puzzle)

But where was I? Right, Japanese aesthetic concepts and Vice Presidential family names (!?). This latter one ... wow, I did not understand the clue at all (40D: Vice President Harris's family nickname). I was looking for a family name (I missed the "nick-" part), and so figured it was her family name—the last name she had before she got married. Anyway, how am I supposed to know that MOMALA is what the Vice President's stepchildren call her (!?!?) (it's a portmanteau of "mom" and "Kamala")!? Also, why would I want to know that? When I google this term, I get a lot of hits involving a recent episode of the Drew Barrymore Show (that's a thing?) where she apparently asked the VP to be "MOMALA" for the country (!!?!?), and people are mad at how embarrassing or problematic this is, or something like that. There are stories about this at seemingly every major media outlet (!?!?). The "think pieces" this has inspired in the last (squints at screen ... checks watch) three days ... including in the NYT (!?!?!) ... so many lecturey think pieces. All because of something that Drew (aside:  "... really? ..." (checks notes)) ... yep, Drew Barrymore said. Wow. I do not ... understand ... what interests people. (One of the worst aspects of this job is looking things up. "You'll learn things!" Will I, though?)

Oh, right, the puzzle. It's a very first-person plural puzzle. "WE ARE SO DEAD!" "WE CARE!" "SPARE US!" It's also packed with multiword answers, with six (!) of the seven long Acrosses running to three words or more. This could've/should've made parsing those answers difficult at times, but it really didn't. The worst trouble I had was trying to parse RAISE A STINK from the center—just a bunch of ultracommon letters in an incomprehensible pile-up. But once I got the "K" from FREAKS, even that answer just fell over. Very colloquial grid as well—lots of spoken phrases, including the iconic "LUCY, I'M HOME!" It's fun, this grid. It's not really showing me anything new, but it's doing what it's doing fairly well. I think I like the NW corner the best, where the longer answers are concerned. There's just a nice zip, as well as a pleasing textural contrast, in that BANANA CHIP / "LUCY, I'M HOME!" stack. Plus I enjoyed learning new TARA REID facts! (11D: Portrayer of Bunny Lebowski in "The Big Lebowski"). She's more than just ["Sharknado!" actress], people!

Probably shouldn't have "family" in your MOMALA clue when you've got FAMILY in your grid (5D: Where roots are branches => FAMILY TREE). But I only just noticed this. As I was solving, there was very little that made me cringe or groan. As for errors, I had just three, and they didn't last long. The one that threatened to do the most damage was APTER for ABLER (1D: Better fit).  But when I ended up with an iconic 1950s TV line that started "TUCY!" I knew something was wrong. I spelled FEY with an "E" because ... well, I thought that was how you spelled it, frankly (4D: Elfin folk => FAY). From merriam-webster.com:

Fey is a word that defies its own (original) meaning, since it has yet to even come close to the brink of death after being in our language for well over 800 years. In Old and Middle English it meant "feeble" or "sickly." Those meanings turned out to be fey themselves, but the word lived on in senses related to death, and because a wild or elated state of mind was once believed to portend death, other senses arose from these. The word fay, meaning "fairy" or "elf," may also have had an influence on some senses of fey. Not until the 20th century did the word's most recent meanings, "precious" and "campy," find their way into the dictionary. 

Speaking of Merriam-Webster (well, WEBSTER, anyway), that's the other answer I screwed up. I had -STER at 37A: Man of many words? and wrote in TOASTER (as in ... the man ... who gives a toast ... thus saying many words, perhaps).

Notes:

• 5A: Stays hungry (FASTS) — the FASTS / SHOTS / LOS patch was dicey for a bit. You're assuming someone who is fasting is hungry. And started hungry and then stayed that way. I get that you're doing a misdirection bit here, but it feels mildly off. SHOTS (i.e. small glasses of liquor) got clued as if it were a verb (7D: What some do during a night out), so that was tough. Then LOS got clued as if it had something to do with music (24A: Altos might follow this). Just a wicked little patch of black ice. But still, ultimately navigable.
• 9D: Dimension, e.g. (SPEC) — again, I see that you are doing a bit here with the doubling of the "dimension" clues at 8- and 9-Down, but in the singular, in this context, this is weird. I would count "dimensions" (plural) as one SPEC.
• 60A: Singles material, say (CLAY) — really really trying on these misdirection clues. One dollar bills? Unmarried people? No. Tennis, with the "material" being tennis playing surfaces.
• 2D: More than tipsy (SAUCED) — SAUCED/SOUSED is an entirely unexpected kealoa*! Luckily I had the "C" from ECO firmly ensconced, so no problem here.
• 3D: Figure that's not usually discussed (INCOME) — unless you are a professional baseball player, in which case it's all anyone discusses.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

*kealoa = a pair of words (normally short, common answers) that can be clued identically and that share at least one letter in common (in the same position). These are answers you can't just fill in quickly because two or more answers are viable, Even With One or More Letters In Place. From the classic [Mauna ___] KEA/LOA conundrum. See also, e.g. [Heaps] ATON/ALOT, ["Git!"] "SHOO"/"SCAT," etc. 

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Something ending in "K," perhaps / FRI 5-3-24 / Nickname for a Texas metropolis / Alternative to the online newspaper, colloquially / Phrase that inspired the title of Prince Harry's memoir / Athlete's affliction, informally / Game with a hands-down winner? / Pip's love in "Great Expectations" / Adornment for the unpierced

Constructor: Eli Cotham

Relative difficulty: Very Easy

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: SPARE (20A: Phrase that inspired the title of Prince Harry's memoir) —

Spare is a memoir by Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, which was released on 10 January 2023. It was ghostwritten by J. R. Moehringer and published by Penguin Random House. It is 416 pages long and available in digital, paperback, and hardcover formats and has been translated into fifteen languages. There is also a 15-hour audiobook edition, which Harry narrates himself.

The book was highly anticipated and was accompanied by several major broadcast interviews. The title refers to the aristocratic adage that an "heir and a spare" was needed to ensure that an inheritance remained in the family. In the book, Harry details his childhood and the profound effect of the death of his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, as well as his teenage years, and subsequent deployment to Afghanistan with the British Army. He writes about his relationship with his older brother, Prince William, and his father, King Charles III, and his father's marriage to Queen Camilla, as well as his courtship and marriage to the American actress Meghan Markle and the couple's subsequent stepping back from their royal roles.

Spare received generally mixed reviews from critics, some who praised Harry's openness but were critical of the inclusion of too many personal details. According to Guinness World Records, Spare became "the fastest selling non-fiction book of all time" on the date of its release. (wikipedia) (my emph.)

• • •

So weird to have Fridays play like Saturdays for seemingly months now, and then encounter this Friday puzzle, which I blew through like it was barely there. Tuesday/Wednesday-level, tops. Difficulty-wise, this was wispy, but despite a barrage of subpar short fill, the longer answers overwhelmingly paid off, which is what's supposed to happen with a late-week themeless (particularly a Friday), so I'm pretty pleased with today's solving experience, overall. Typically, a puzzle (particularly a Friday/Saturday) will start slow or slowing, and then (ideally), there's a breakthrough followed by a whoosh that sends me careening happily around the grid. Today, the puzzle didn't even bother to start slow, and the whoosh came before I'd had a chance to even get settled, right out of the box. I wanted NORM for 1A: Average but instantly thought "maybe MEAN?" and kept that answer in my head as well as I tested the crosses. Since the first cross I checked, 4D: Juncture, wanted to be NODE, I decided to go MEAN->NODE, and then the "O" from NODE gave me ALSO and I decided that that was enough confirmation for me to write all those answers in. I've been doing crosswords long enough that ASAHI and ELENA Delle Donne are gimmes, so I was quickly ready to test my first long Across, and ... whoosh:

I should say that before I even looked at the clue for 20-Across, I had this odd moment of thinking "well, I assume the answer has something to do with ANHEUSER-BUSCH because what the hell else starts 'ANHE-'!?" So there was an extra zing to that first whoosh today—the "aha" of the odd letter-sequence revelation on top of the inherent greatness of the answer itself. If I'm stopping to take a screenshot, that either means it's very bad or very good, and here, it was very much the latter. I didn't even have time to be brought down by the rather lackluster NW before I went hurtling across the grid, and luckily the pleasing momentum provided by AN HEIR AND A SPARE largely continued, with sufficient power from smile-inducing answers to blow right through "ADIA" and NENE and ÉTÉS and the like without too much wincing.

DEAD-TREE EDITION didn't do much for me (feels like I've seen it before, so whatever freshness the term had has worn off), but I will admit that PET PSYCHIC, besides being the most absurd profession ("profession"?) on the planet, really got me, in a good way. Again, as with "ANHE-," I had this weird parsing problem where I was staring down "PETPS-" The "PETP-" part of it had me wondering if maybe there wasn't such a thing as PET PAINTING or PET PAINTS or PET PASTELS—that was how I first took "medium" in [Medium for animals]. But the "PS-" was unimpeachable and it didn't take me long to answer the question "What could possibly follow PET and start with PS-?" PET PSYCHIC. So dumb, I love it! I also have a soft spot for the term VALISES, which I did not realize until filling the answer in. "Hey, that's a nice word," I thought. And crossed with VAMOOSE! Imagining people VAMOOSE-ing with their VALISES down the AVENUES, I entered the bottom of the grid, which is the one and only area where my forward momentum stalled for a bit; I went right through the middle of those long answers, but couldn't get either of them from just their middle chunks. So I went back up to that RECOATS area and down via "NOW LET'S SEE..." (also nice), and from there quickly filled out the front ends of the long answers down below, and bang bang, big payoff there with "THIS IS AN OUTRAGE!" and (especially!) GAS STATION SUSHI (49A: Shell fish? What a clue!). I only wish that ASAMI and ASAHI had swapped places. because after that GAS STATION SUSHI you are definitely want something to wash it down, and ASAHI seems fitting. The SUSHI / ASAHI crossing would've been the cherry on top (which, coincidentally, is how they serve GAS STATION SUSHI. Me: [looks dubiously at plastic container of sushi next to the beef jerky jar] "Maraschino cherry?" Cashier: "Yup. It's sweet. Kinda hides the fishy taste, you know? You want a Miller Lite with that?" "Uh ... you got any ASAHI?"). 

Two trouble spots today. After I hit the bottom of the grid from the east, I tried to climb back up the west via the back end of 38D: One way to prepare steak, but with an -RE there, the only thing I could think was something-RARE, but MEDIUM didn't fit and I didn't know there were other RAREs besides maybe ... VERY? WAY? "How would you like your steak?" "Like ... rare." "How rare? "WAY RARE, man." Much as WAY RARE amused me, I (wisely) didn't write it in. This is the point at which I fled back to the RECOATS area and back down again. That area wasn't tough, but it did have one briefly toughish clue: 29D: Something ending in "K," perhaps (RACE). My fake-cultured self was like "Isn't that how they number the works in Mozart's catalogue—with numbers followed by K?" Yes, but irrelevant here, where we're dealing with (foot) RACEs of 5K and 10K and possibly other dimensions.

Notes:

• 25A: Athlete's affliction, informally (THE YIPS) — you know I hate it when they use the same clue for two different answers, but today was the day I wouldn't have minded, because [Golf difficulties, perhaps] is very close to perfect for THE YIPS (while being just OK for its actual answer, 60A: LIES). I know that anyone athlete can get some version of THE YIPS, but I associate it most closely with golf.
• 35A: Shared a bed with one's baby (COSLEPT) — loved seeing this rather common concept in the puzzle, though I would've liked COSLEEP or COSLEEPING a hair's breadth better.
• 9D: Game with a hands-down winner? (TWISTER) — not many "?" clues today, but the ones that they trot out really land. 

• 42A: Pip's love in "Great Expectations" (ESTELLA) — darn this girl and her ambiguous final vowel! Luckily there's no such thing as "steak TERTARE" (sounds like something you'd find next to the GAS STATION SUSHI) (eater beware)

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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