Spanish city famous for its oranges / TUES 11-25-25 / Hindu deity known as the "Destroyer" / Motown legend Lionel / Organizer of events for swingers?

Hi, everyone, it’s Clare for the last Tuesday of November! Hope everyone is having a good start to the holiday season. I’ve been settling back into a D.C. rhythm after a spur-of-the-moment trip to Barcelona with my sister, Shannon, a couple of weeks ago! (She was going for work and had a free hotel room for me to crash in😊) We ate lots of patatas bravas and drank some (OK, a lot of) sangria, and now I think I’m moving to Barcelona. I just need to practice my Spanish a bit. Or a lot. Sports are a bit meh right now (as my Steelers and Liverpool aren’t doing so hot), but, hey, at least Yale thumped Harvard in The Game. 

Anywho, on to the puzzle…

Constructor: John Ewbank

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: DOOM SCROLLS (63A: Engages in a dispiriting online activity … or what happens in this puzzle's shaded squares?) — The shaded squares all use the letters in DOOM, and the positions of the letters “scroll” in order (with the final letter being moved to the front with each new appearance as you move down the puzzle)

Theme answers:

• VOODOO MAGIC (17A: Sorcery commonly associated with Haiti and New Orleans) 
• STORM DOOR (26A: Extra barrier to protect a house from bad weather) 
• TOM DOOLEY (38A: Traditional folk song that became a #1 hit for the Kingston Trio) 
• ZOOM DATES (54A: Romantic options for a long-distance relationship)

Word of the Day: TOM DOOLEY (38A: Traditional folk song that became a #1 hit for the Kingston Trio) —

Tom Dooley" (Roud 4192) is a traditional North Carolina folk song based on the 1866 murder of a woman named Laura Foster in Wilkes County, North Carolina by Tom Dula (whose name in the local dialect was pronounced "Dooley"). One of the more famous murder ballads, a popular hit version recorded in 1958 by The Kingston Trio reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, was in the top 10 on the Billboard R&B chart, and appeared in the Cashbox Country Music Top 20… In 1866, Laura Foster was murdered. Confederate veteran Tom Dula, Foster's lover and the father of her unborn child, was convicted of her murder and hanged May 1, 1868… Thanks to the efforts of newspapers such as The New York Times and to the fact that former North Carolina governor Zebulon Vance represented Dula pro bono, Dula's murder trial and hanging were given widespread national publicity. (Wiki)

• • •

WELL, I SORTA (36D) liked this puzzle. The theme was well-executed, and it’s clever how the letters in DOOM shift as you go down the puzzle. But the theme felt like a long way to go for little payoff. There wasn’t anything particularly objectionable about it, but it took some minor sleuthing after the solve to understand the point the theme was trying to get across, and the letter combinations after the first one — MDOO, OMDO, and OOMD — just look awkward. 

I’m not sure VOODOO MAGIC (17A) works as an answer because it seems like it’s usually just described as VOODOO. The info I was finding had very few references to MAGIC (and didn’t combine the terms). The other theme answers seemed fine, though I didn’t know TOM DOOLEY (38A). [Side note: This song is about a Confederate soldier who was convicted of murdering a woman, and it was somehow turned into a folk legend? I went down a Wikipedia rabbit hole, and it’s a pretty weird song.] I also think the clue for STORM DOOR (26A: Extra barrier to protect a house from bad weather) is somewhat wrong because the STORM DOOR is a glass door that protects the regular wooden door from weathering; it seems like a stretch to say it’s protecting the house. 

Beyond the theme, there wasn’t much that grabbed me about the puzzle. The longest downs were WELL SORTA (36D: "I mean, I guess …") and IPOD NANOS (5D: Music players discontinued in 2017), which, well, sorta, don’t inspire much excitement. TACO PIE (27D: Tex-Mex casserole with a crust) is blah. A LOT OF (58A: Many, many) doesn’t really match the clue and is an awkward-looking partial. And I can’t get behind that spelling of SLIER (9D: More cunning). 

I got a bit stuck on EBSEN (24A), having never seen “The Beverly Hillbillies,” and I had no idea that the STOOGES (43D) were Iggy Pop’s backup group. It also took me way too long to realize that LORES (52A: Like early PC graphics) was indicating LO-RES (as in, low resolution). I had _ORES for quite a long time before I could convince myself to put in the L, even though that was the only letter that made sense coming down. 

I liked ONE GRAM (13D: Weight of every U.S. bank note), as it’s a decent bit of trivia. PGA TOUR (11D: Organizer of events for swingers?) is clever. The clue for REVIEW (1D: "No" was a famously short one for the 1948 musical "Isn't It Romantic?") was incredible; I’ll be thinking about that for a while. The word BIZARRO (41D: ___ World, DC Comics planet of opposites) is fun. I don’t think RITA ORA (12D: "How We Do (Party)" pop singer) is a big enough name to be in a Tuesday crossword, but I thought it was clever to have ORA cross AURA (31A: Certain something). I love WILMA (29A: Flintstone with a red updo) in the puzzle. Yabba dabba doo! And OCCAM (10D: Philosopher known for his "razor") is fun.

Misc.:

• BTS!!! (41A: K-pop band that went on hiatus in 2022 when their members went into military service) You didn’t think that I’d forget about BTS, did you?! They’ve recorded some for their album coming in the spring and are rehearsing for their world tour next year!! Please prepare yourselves for the inevitable videos and tweets I will share. 
• 20A: U.K. : H.M.R.C. :: U.S.A. : __ felt like a tortured way of cluing just… IRS, but, hey, now I know that HMRC stands for His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. 
• I’ve been reading my fair share of BRIT LIT (45D: Course that may cover Jane Austen and Emily Brontë, for short) this last month, as I rediscovered Agatha Christie novels. I read “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd,” which pioneered a concept used in mystery novels to this day, and it was phenomenal. I’ve now read (or listened to) 14 of her books in the last month. 
• It’s actually my dream to get semi-famous (or be related to someone famous — come on, Shannon!) so I can go on Dancing With the Stars and learn for a few weeks how to dance (for example, how to SALSA). 
• Speaking of SALSAS (53D: Engages in an energetic Latin dance), it did go nicely with TACO PIE (27D) and GUAC (68A: Burrito bar offering, informally). 
• I’ve been going on more, longer hikes with my pup, Red, though it’s getting a bit cold. Red’s brother Banjo (my mom’s dog) is visiting, and he and Red are quite possibly having the time of their lives. 

And that’s all from me, folks! I’ll see y’all again around Christmas.

Signed, Clare Carroll, whom you’ll find doomwatching Liverpool every weekend

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Cereal with "marbits" and a leprechaun mascot / MON 11-24-25 / Dog-napping spot? / Dad's noncommittal response to a kid's request / Desert plant with many uses / Toy that comes out of a spray can / Casually talk about one's connections to celebrities

Constructor: Zhou Zhang

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: DUCK, DUCK, GOOSE (51A: Fowl play? ... or words that can follow the starts of 20-, 32- and 42-Across) — SITTING duck, LUCKY duck, SILLY goose ...

Theme answers:

• SITTING PRETTY (20A: Comfortably well-off)
• LUCKY CHARMS (32A: Cereal with "marbits" and a leprechaun mascot)
• SILLY STRING (42A: Toy that comes out of a spray can)

Word of the Day: marbits (see 32A) —

Marbit refers to a bit of dried marshmallow that is often pressed into a colorful shape and included in some sweetened breakfast cereals. (merriam-webster.com)

• • •

Simple, straightforward, effective, with a little bit of wordplay ([Fowl play?...]) on the revealer clue. Nice. The themers are interesting in their own right, and there are a host of longer Downs that add color to the grid. The fill is pretty clean. So yeah, a very solid Monday. Not much to say about the theme except that when I think of the animal that is colloquially lucky, it's a dog, not a duck. Lucky dog. That is the phrase I know best. Various predictive searches certainly prefer "lucky dog" to "LUCKY DUCK." Let's try DuckDuckGo, just for aptness's sake:

And now Google

So there's a predictive search preference for "dog," but not much of one. I've certainly heard "lucky duck," and its currency is attested all over the place, so there's no actual problem here. Curiously, both LUCKY DOG and LUCKY DUCK are brands of beer ... 

... although there are so many beers in the world now that probably any random phrase has a beer named after it — like: Sad Clown. Is there a Sad Clown beer? ... [googles hopefully] ... ha ha, no, but my search did lead me to a pretty funny Schlitz ad:

The most annoying thing about the puzzle was the horrific word "marbits," which I've never heard of in my life, despite knowing about LUCKY CHARMS for my whole life. When did people start calling the marshmallows "marbits." It's an unfathomably awful name. Even the makers of this puzzle couldn't bring themselves to use it without putting it into quotation marks (despite the fact that it's in Webster's, at least online). "Marbits" sounds like a skin disease, or a kind of burrowing rodent. [Cereal with a leprechaun mascot] would've worked just fine, but no, you've gotta throw "marbits" at me. "Marbits" (ironically) does not pass my personal breakfast test. 

[Why are the mascots of kids' cereals so often (well, at least twice) antagonists? I mean, Tony the Tiger is a coked-up people pleaser who's happy to push Frosted Flakes on anyone who'll listen (yeah, "they're grrrreat," Tony, we get it), but Lucky here tries to thwart the kids' pursuit of their morning sugar high, and the Trix Rabbit ... well, he's not really trying to deprive the kids, he just keeps committing fraud in order to get Trix because he's jonesing so hard, but then the kids thwart him by discovering he's a rabbit and lecturing him about species-appropriate behavior. I want a mascot that puts these damn kids in their place. "You're gonna eat your mush and like it, you obnoxious brats!"]

Solving this one Downs-only resulted in two problem sections, the first much more serious than the second. Up top, I completely whiffed on all of the short Downs from 5 to 8. No idea where the dog was supposed to be napping (5D: Dog-napping spot? = CRATE), thought [Muggy] was MOIST (!), had "C'MON" for 7D: "Let's do it!" ("I'M IN!"), and had both PINE and ACHE before LONG (8D: Yearn (for)). That's a lot of whiffing. And yet, since I had the SIT- and managed to work out the -ETTY, I was able to infer the entirety of the phrase SITTING PRETTY, and that gave me the letters I needed to get HUMID and LONG and the rest of them. The second, less tough trouble spot was in the south, where I had CACTI before AGAVE (48D: Desert plant with many uses), and didn't know if it was supposed to be ZONK or CONK at 54D: Fall asleep, with "out" (CONK). I also found "ASK MOM" very hard to parse (45D: Dad's noncommittal response to a kid's request). I guess referring the questioner to another person is noncommittal, but I really wanted something equivalent to "maybe." But again, being able to infer the long answer (the revealer) made all the problems down there disappear. 

Bullet points:

• 33D: Alvin and his back up singers (CHIPMUNKS) — I'm culling my LP collection and one of the records that's going is Christmas with the CHIPMUNKS. It's an appealingly kitschy piece of music history, but I can't imagine voluntarily listening to that much chipmunk voice. Novelty wears off real quick. The only CHIPMUNKS Christmas song I know well and the only one I care to know (sorry to start playing Christmas music before Thanksgiving ... I'm usually pretty strict about this):

• 9D: Casually talk about one's connections to celebrities (DROP NAMES) — this reminds me of the time that Anne Hatha- ... sorry, I mean: this is definitely a real phrase and yet has been supplanted, largely (at least in my vocabulary), by the verb "namedrop." 
• 3D: Flabbergasted (GOBSMACKED) — the big winner of the day. Such a pleasure to get this in my NW corner as opposed to the dense assortment of garbage I've been getting of late. The grid occasionally gets a little thick with repeaters (that OER ETNA ENNUI ERS patch, e.g.), but mostly it holds up very well. No wincing today. And GOBSMACKED—mwah!

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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