November 2, 2025

Title: I'VE BEEN FRAMED!

Constructor: Sean Ziebarth

Editor: Amie Walker

Theme synopsis:

• FAMILY PORTRAIT (20A: Keepsake image of relatives)
• ROGER RABBIT (38A: Long-eared Toontown hopper)
• READING GLASSES (57A: Eyewear for a bookworm)

I'VE BEEN FRAMED!: Each theme answer is something that has BEEN FRAMED.

Random thoughts and interesting things:

• OREO (14A: Cookie shaped like its first and last letters) This is a delightful clue for our crossword friend OREO.
• LUGE (16A: Winter Olympics sport) and SLEDS (55D: 16-Across vehicles) A LUGE is a small SLED holding one or two people. Riders lie face up and SLED feet first. Lugers compete on artificial tracks that have specially-designed banked curves and walled-in straight sections. A LUGE can reach speeds of over 87 mph. The top speed recorded on a LUGE was 96 mph on a track in Canada prior to the 2010 Winter Olympics. LUGE has been an Olympic sport since 1964. 
• OMAN (17A: Persian Gulf sultanate) The full name of OMAN, a country located in West Asia, is the Sultanate of OMAN. The capital of OMAN is Muscat.
• EGOT (19A: Awards quartet that is one-quarter Oscar (Abbr.)) and RITA (67A: Moreno who is a 19-Across winner) EGOT is an acronym for Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Awards, and is used as a designation for people, like Rita Moreno, who have won all four of these honors. Rita Moreno won Emmy Awards in 1977 for The Muppet Show and 1978 for The Rockford Files, a Grammy in 1972 for a recording of The Electric Company, an Oscar in 1962 for Westside Story, and a Tony in 1975 for The Ritz.
• YSL (24A: High-fashion initials) YSL is a high-end French fashion house founded in 1961 by Yves St. Laurent (1936-2008) and Pierre Bergé (1930-2017).
• EARTH (29A: "Alien: ___" (science fiction horror series)) Alien: EARTH is a TV series that premiered in August of this year. It is the first TV series of the Alien franchise, and is set two years before the events of the 1979 movie Alien. The premise of the series is humanity's pursuit of immortality.
• CNN (34A: Audie Cornish's network) Audie Cornish is the host of the morning news program, CNN This Morning with Audie Cornish, and the host of the weekly CNN podcast, The Assignment with Audie Cornish. From 2012-2022, she was a co-host of NPR's All Things Considered.
• ROGER RABBIT (38A: Long-eared Toontown hopper) ROGER RABBIT is the titular character of the 1988 live-action and animation movie, Who Framed ROGER RABBIT. The movie is set in 1947 in an alternative history Hollywood where humans and toons co-exist.
• MERGE (63A: Join a carpool?) The question mark alerts us to expect some trickiness here. The clue is not referring to joining a carpool as a rider, but joining a pool of cars on the interstate when one MERGEs.
• UTAH (64A: Great Salt Lake state) The Great Salt Lake is the largest saltwater lake in North America. It is located in the northern part of UTAH, and UTAH's capital, Salt Lake City, was named for it.
• TONI (4D: "Sula" author Morrison) Published in 1973, Sula was TONI Morrison's second published novel. Sula is a coming-of-age novel that tells the story of two girls – Sula and Mel – who live in a Black community in Ohio.
• RIH (22D: "We Found Love" singer, to fans) RIH is a nickname for Rihanna. "We Found Love" is a 2011 song by Rihanna from her album, Talk That Talk. The song features Scottish DJ Calvin Harris.
• RNA (31D: Molecule seen in "modern art"?) Looking for a bit of RNA? Perhaps you'll find some by looking at modern art.
• NEMO (35D: Animated fish with a "lucky fin") NEMO is the titular character of the 2003 animated movie Finding NEMO. His "lucky fin" is a deformed pelvic fin.
• RIO (39D: 2016 Olympics host) The 2016 Summer Olympics were held in RIO de Janeiro, Brazil.
• IMDB (58D: Site for film buffs) IMDB is on online database of info related to movies, TV series, podcasts, video games, and other online streaming content. IMDB began in 1990 as a fan-operated database. Since 1993 it has been a subsidiary of Amazon.
• IDA (62D: Activist ___ B. Wells) I have previously written about IDA B. Wells.
• A few other clues I especially enjoyed:
• BELTS (48A: They're usually looped in)
• HUG IT OUT (11D: Resolve a conflict with a squeeze)
• EGO TRIP (12D: Self-centered "journey")

When we see the use of an exclamation mark at the end of a clue, it's an indication to solvers to take the clue literally. The same is true of today's titled. Each of the theme answers today has literally BEEN FRAMED. I appreciate that each answer is FRAMED in a different way: a FAMILY PORTRAIT is FRAMED in a picture FRAME, ROGER RABBIT was FRAMED for murder, and in READING GLASSES, the lenses are in a GLASSES FRAME. I quite enjoyed this theme. Thank you, Sean, for this delightful puzzle.