September 9, 2021

Title: NO, NO AND NO!

Constructors: Rachel Fabi & Brooke Husic

Editor: Amanda Rafkin

Theme Answers:

SHANTAY, YOU STAY (19A: RuPaul's rhyming catchphrase for a lip-sync winner)

CANTERBURY TALES (38A:"The ___" (Chaucer stories in which the singular "they" can be found))

WONTON WRAPPERS (52A: Sheets for folding dumplings)

Theme synopsis: A contraction with the word "not" is found at the beginning of each theme answer. Our NO, NO AND NO! trio is SHAN'T (shall not), CAN'T (cannot), and WON'T (will not).

And now a word from our constructors:

Brooke: I asked Rachel if we could retro-fit a theme around SHANTAY YOU STAY and she came up with this brilliant idea while we were talking about it on the phone. Making puzzles with Rachel is a surreal experience because there’s nothing she can’t grid and everything she makes is also somehow also beautiful aesthetically. I love the central theme answer and its clue and I also love referencing BROOD X (I actually miss the cicadas and thought they were kind of adorable). We always clue on a video call together, which I love, and my favorite Rachel clues are 9D (so spot-on!) and 48D. I also like RODE off into the sunset.

Rachel: As so often happens, Brooke and I went from seed entry to wholly developed themeset, filled grid, and clues in under 3 days. Making puzzles with Brooke is the best because she is brilliant and lightning fast, and because her clue-writing is truly the greatest, whether it’s for her brutal experimental blog puzzles or simple USAT grids like this one. I especially love Brooke’s clues at 13D, 38A, 24D, and 62A.

Brooke & Rachel: In the spring of this year, we raised over $35,000 for the Baltimore Abortion Fund through a charity puzzle pack called “These Puzzles Fund Abortion.” The pack features crossword puzzles from a raft of talented, generous constructors, many of whom also construct for the USA Today puzzle. In light of Texas’s recently-signed SB8, a dangerous and far-reaching anti-abortion law, we have brought the pack back to raise money for Texas-based abortion funds. For every fundraising milestone we hit, we are also releasing bonus puzzles as an incentive on Just Gridding!, the blog that Rachel shares with Claire Rimkus. See here for more details, and please consider donating to a Texas abortion fund in exchange for some awesome reproductive-justice-themed puzzles.

Sally's Note: I second (third?) the recommendation to support this fundraiser. Not only do you get some fabulous puzzles, (I solved the original pack of 14 puzzles in one afternoon in April!) but if you are discouraged, disappointed, frustrated, and/or angry about Texas's recently enacted law, this is a chance to take action.

Things I learned:

• EDEN (66A: Country singer Brooke) Singer, songwriter Brooke EDEN has released three new songs this year, "No Shade," "Sunroof," and "Got No Choice." 
• SANAA (10D: "A Raisin in the Sun" actress Lathan) In 1959, "A Raisin in the Sun" by Lorraine Hansberry was the first play written by a Black woman to be produced on Broadway (as I wrote about March 29, 2021). The play has been revived and adapted many times. In the 2004 Broadway version, SANAA Lathan played the role of Beneatha Younger.
• ASS (13D: "The Bad-___ Librarians of Timbuktu" (2016 book)) The Bad-ASS Librarians of Timbuktu by Joshua Hammer chronicles the story of librarian Abdel Kader Haidara, who oversaw the smuggling of 350,000 medieval manuscripts out of Timbuktu after al-Qaida invaded Timbuktu. I did not know about this book, or the story it tells. I'm fascinated and will be learning more about this!
• SONOYA (44D: Actress Mizuno) SONOYA Mizuno played the role of Er. Azumi Fujita in the 2018 Netflix miniseries, Maniac. She also played the role of Kyoko in the 2014 movie Ex Machina.

Random thoughts and interesting things:

• SHANTAY YOU STAY (19A: RuPaul's rhyming catchphrase for a lip-sync winner) If you have never seen RuPaul's Drag Race, you might have needed all of the crossing answers to uncover SHANTAY, YOU STAY. Fortunately, the clue also provided the hint that the answer rhymed. This article from Marie Claire explains that RuPaul uses SHANTAY as a term of endearment. The article, from 2014 spells SHANTAY as "shante." In a tweet the same month, RuPaul expressed preference for the spelling "SHANTAY." It amused me that this answer is a positive in that it is a phrase used to indicate a queen is staying on the show, but is being used as part of a negative theme. That's fun. (One more thing, if you solved in the app, you may have noticed the clue said "li-psync" instead of "lip-sync." I think this is just a typo.)
• MAY (22A: National "Get Caught Reading" Month) What a lovely reason to celebrate. The Get Caught Reading campaign was started in 1999 by the Association of American Publishers. It's now a year round campaign managed by Every Child a Reader.
• AMONG (31A: "___ Us" (game featuring sabotage in space)) I learned about AMONG Us from the June 9, 2021 puzzle. 
• CANTERBURY TALES (38A:"The ___" (Chaucer stories in which the singular "they" can be found)) Geoffrey Chaucer wrote The CANTERBURY TALES between 1387 and 1400. The TALES are presented as a storytelling contest among pilgrims traveling from London to CANTERBURY. The use of the singular "they" is a fun fact to know about this classic work. 
• NERD (62A: Sporcle enthusiast, perhaps) Sporcle is a trivia website on which users can take quizzes on a range of subjects. 
• RESIN (63A: Yellowish plant goop) The use of the highly technical term "goop" to describe the viscous substance of RESIN made me chuckle.
• BROOD (7D: ___ X (makeup of the 2021 cicada swarm)) We've had plenty of cicadas in Iowa, as we do every year, but we did not see BROOD X this year, as different BROODs emerge in different locations, and this year BROOD X was in the Mid-Atlantic area. 
• AYE (20D: Yes vote) This positive answer seems misplaced in today's negative puzzle!
• TACO (24D: A vegan one might have nopales) Nopales are the edible pads of prickly pear cacti.
• GET OUT (32D: "You need to leave") Ah, now this answer seems to fit right in with today's theme.
• DUA (46D: "Electricity" singer ___ Lipa) "Electricity" is a 2018 song by the duo Silk City and singer DUA Lipa. 
• CORGI (48A: Dog associated with Queen Elizabeth II) Queen Elizabeth II has been fond of CORGIs since she was a child, and has owned over thirty different CORGIs during her reign as Queen. Her first CORGI, named Susan, was given to her as a gift for her 18th birthday. Her most recent CORGI was gifted to her this year. to commemorate what would have been Prince Phillip's 100th birthday. 

Geography review:

• IOWAN (33A: Person from Ames) Also a person from Iowa City. Sadly, IOWAN will never be clued as a "Person from Iowa City" because that would give the answer away! My husband is fond of poking fun of the name of our city by saying Iowa City is neither. (Iowa City is not representative of much of the rest of the state, and it is certainly not a metropolis.) But I digress... Anyway, this IOWAN says hello!
• ASIA (64A: Continent that's 9% of Earth's surface) For comparison, consider that North America is just under 5% of Earth's surface. We haven't seen our crossword-friend ASIA since the middle of August. Nice to see it make its first September appearance. 
• YEN (12D: Kyoto currency) Kyoto is one of the oldest cities in Japan, and is considered its cultural center.
• OMAN (25D: Muscat's country) Muscat is the capital of OMAN.

Does this puzzle remind you of a stubborn toddler that has recently learned to say the word NO? "NO, NO AND NO! SHAN'T, CAN'T, WON'T!" A delightful theme today that I found extremely tricky to discover. In addition to the answers I've already highlighted, I enjoyed THIN MINT (delicious!), RAN POINT, and IS IT ME? This puzzle was an enjoyable way to begin my Thursday.