July 10, 2023

Title: CLIMBING GYM

Constructor: Sara Cantor

Editor: Amanda Rafkin

Theme Answers:

GLOOMY GUS (22D: Pessimistic person)

AMYGDALAS (20D: Brain parts involved in the fight-or-flight response (Var.))

MY GOOSE IS COOKED (9D: "I'm in big trouble!")

Theme synopsis: The word GYM is found reading up each vertical theme answer, and is CLIMBING up the grid, moving from left to right.

Things I learned:

• CHOI (1D: "Oldboy" actor Min-sik) Oldboy is a 2003 South Korean movie that is a loose adaptation of the Japanese manga of the same name. In the movie, CHOI Min-sik portrays a man imprisoned in a hotel room cell for 15 years without knowing the identity of his captor or the reason for his imprisonment. CHOI Min-sik received critical acclaim for the role. 
• BUTTONS (6D: What the Other Mother has instead of eyes in "Coraline") Coraline is a 2009 animated movie based on Neil Gaiman's novella of the same name. The title character of Coraline, which is categorized as dark fantasy horror, discovers a parallel universe behind a secret door. In the parallel universe, Coraline meets Other Mother and Other Father, BUTTON-eyed doppelgängers of her parents.
• VMA (36D: Award in the shape of a Moon Person, for short) The MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs) are awarded annually. Winners are given a statue of an astronaut on the moon, which was colloquially called a "moonman" until 2017, when the president of MTV announced the statue would be called a "Moon Person."

Random thoughts and interesting things:

• UNIONS (34A: The Writers Guild of America and others) The Writers Guild of America (WGA) is the coordinated effort of two UNIONS, The Writers Guild of America, East (headquartered in New York City) and the Writers Guild of America West (headquartered in Los Angeles). The WGA has been on strike since May 2 of this year.
• PARKOUR (60A: Sport that involves navigating an urban environment) PARKOUR is a type of movement and a training discipline in which practitioners attempt to get from point A to point B in the most fluid way possible. Usually carried out in urban spaces, PARKOUR involves navigating over, under, and across various obstacles. I enjoy watching PARKOUR, but also it scares me because most of them don't wear helmets!
• IRL (61A: Not online, for short) IRL = In Real Life
• INSERTS (63A: They might fall out of Playbills) I've read a lot of Playbills -

  

  Playbills

  the programs handed out at theaters, but I've never looked into their history. A Playbill was first printed in 1884. The publication has been known as Playbill since 1957, and it's now used at theaters on Broadway and throughout the United States. Since 2014, the yellow banner on the front of the program has been replaced with a rainbow banner for Pride month. (We were last in New York City in June 2022.) INSERTS are placed in Playbills to announce changes, such as when understudies step in for a performance.
• EWES (12D: Female sheep) This clue works for "ewe" or EWES, since sheep is both singular and plural.
• AMYGDALAS (20D: Brain parts involved in the fight-or-flight response (Var.)) The AMYGDALAS are two almond-shaped locations in the temporal lobes of the brains of humans and other complex vertebrates. These areas play a critical role in emotional responses. I noticed the "Var." (indicating a variant spelling) after I'd already filled in the answer, and wondered "Isn't that how AMYGDALA is spelled?" Yes, this is how AMYGDALA is spelled. The variation refers to the plural form, as AMYGDALAE is also used as the plural form.
• BAO (24D: Pixar short in which a steamed bun comes to life) BAO is a 2018 Pixar short which preceded Incredibles 2 in theaters. BAO won an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. As the clue informs us, BAO is about a steamed bun that comes to life.

Geography review:

• MIAMI (39A: The Dolphins' home city) The NFL team, the MIAMI Dolphins play their home games at Hard Rock Stadium in MIAMI Gardens, Florida.
• SLAV (41A: Czech or Serb) SLAVs are a group of people who speak any of the SLAVic languages: Russian, Belarusian, Ukranian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbo-Croatian, and Slovene. The SLAVic people are the largest ethnographic-linguistic group in Europe.
• ALAMO (8D: San Antonio landmark) The ALAMO is a historic Spanish mission that was the site of the Battle of the ALAMO in 1836. Today the ALAMO is a museum located in the ALAMO Plaza Historic District in San Antonio, Texas. 

No need to be a GLOOMY GUS when we have this fun puzzle to solve. I like the visual of the GYM CLIMBING up the grid. Also fun was the "winged" pair of CHERUB and CUPID, and the clue for ELEVEN (29D: Number that looks like two lower case l's). Thank you, Sara, for this excellent Monday puzzle.