Set of notches in a dictionary / THU 10-23-25 / “Done!,” in geometry class / Clay being of Jewish folklore / ___ Nicolas, remotest of California’s Channel Islands / Genre for Blackpink and Stray Kids / 1887 drama on which a Puccini opera was based / Composers’ rights org. / Units roughly equal to a quarter of a calorie

Constructor: Aimee Lucido

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: PICKLEBALL (62A: Sports craze of the 2020s … as seen three times in this grid?) — rebus puzzle where words meaning “pickle” (in the sense of “difficult situation” or “tight spot”) can be found inside the three little “balls” (i.e. the circled squares):

Theme answers:

• NIN[JA M]ASTERS / BA[JA, M]EXICO (17A: Stealthiest of stealthy warriors / 4D: Peninsula south of California, colloquially)
• CA[BIN D]OORS / THUM[B IND]EX (40A: Things opened before passengers exit an aircraft / 22D: Set of notches in a dictionary)
• JA[MES S]PADER / TI[MES S]QUARE (45A: Star of NBC’s “The Blacklist” / 39D: Site of a huge annual crowd)

Word of the Day: ALEX Cooper (23A: “Call Her Daddy” podcast host Cooper) —

Alexandra Cooper (born August 21, 1994) is an American podcaster, who co-created and hosts Call Her Daddy, a weekly comedy and advice podcast on Spotify. In 2021, Time Magazine called her “arguably the most successful woman in podcasting” after she signed a three-year exclusive deal with Spotify worth $60 million. Making $20 million per year made her Spotify’s highest earning female podcaster and the second-highest paid podcaster, behind only Joe Rogan. The show was also the second most popular podcast globally on Spotify for 2024 behind Rogan.

Rolling Stone labeled her “the new generation’s Barbara Walters” for frequently enlisting high-profile Hollywood talent and influential individuals in American popular culture to be guests on her podcast. In 2023, Cooper was named to the TIME100 Next list. In 2025, Cooper was named to Time magazine’s inaugural “TIME100 Creators” list – appearing in the “Leaders” category – for her impact as the creator and host of the Call Her Daddy podcast. […] 

In August 2024, Cooper signed a $125 million, three-year deal with Sirius XM which is set to replace Spotify as her distribution and advertising partner beginning in 2025.(wikipedia)

• • •

PICKLEBALL will forever remind me of my doctor, whom I adore, and who has been my doctor for something like a quarter century. She is a few years older than me and we have kids the same age and so every time I visit, she spends a lot of time just chatting with me about our lives (amazing to have a doctor who actually knows you and doesn’t just rush through the appointment). Anyway, her new post-COVID hobby / obsession is PICKLEBALL. She doesn’t do anything by half measures. I thought she was just playing for fun, and then the next time I see her, she’s like a state champion in her age bracket, traveling out of state to tournaments, etc. So every time I visit her now, I hear all about her rise to PICKLEBALL dominance. It’s delightful. She’s a short woman who wears high heels and is always so upbeat and encouraging. I actually like going to the doctor. A truly model primary care doctor. So, shout-out to Dr. Yu, PICKLEBALL star and first-rate physician.  Also, shout-out to this puzzle, which is really a model of its kind. The revealer was delightful. It unfolded perfectly—the realization that there was a rebus, then the realization that the rebus words had something in common (and that “JAM” wasn’t the stuff you put on a sandwich or the act of cramming—as when you JAM a whole word into a tiny box). So … JAM, MESS … yes, I see the connection, you’re in a JAM, in a MESS, in a spot, in a tight spot. But why? Why shrunken down inside circled squares? That’s when the revealer came along and made it all clear. You’re not in a spot, you’re in a PICKLE, and the world meaning “PICKLE” is inside a “BALL” (i.e. a circle). Nice climactic moment, and I still had one “ball” to go. Even though I understood the theme completely, I still had the fun of having to discover what particular “PICKLE” would be in the remaining “BALL.” And as with the first two “balls,” the execution on the final “ball” was flawless. THUM[BIND]EX! In commemoration of the forthcoming 12th edition of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, I assume. Look at the THUM[BIND]EX on this baby!

When I say the execution is perfect, I mean that the theme answers themselves are all inherently interesting; that the words inside the “balls” all precise synonyms of “pickle” (and can replace “pickle” in the phrase “in a pickle” without any change of meaning); and that the rebus words are elegantly positioned within their words, such that the rebus word breaks across a two-word phrase all six times. That is, there is no word in any of the six theme answers that is not affected by the rebus square. No extraneous words that fail to touch the “balls” (!). This puzzle would’ve been much worse if the rebus had looked like this: [JAM]ES SPADER. Look how, in that expression of the theme, SPADER isn’t touching the “ball” at all. It’s just sitting there. Lonely. Superfluous. Uninvolved. Much better to make Mr. Spader’s rebus word [MESS] instead. That way, JAMES touches the “ball” and SPADER touches the “ball” and all phrase elements are involved, hurrah. All hidden / embedded-word themes should be like this. Too often they’re not. So kudos to this puzzle for keeping it tight. 

Fill-wise, things look pretty good. You’ve got multiple “J”s and multiple “X”s and even a “Q” keeping the grid lively, and a lot of longer phrases giving the grid a certain level of interest and personality. There’s something like eleven (11!) non-theme answers of 7 or more letters today—none of them are particularly loud or attention-getting, but they’re all at least solid, and it was a pleasure not to feel like I was constantly mired in short stuff. There’s just a lot of variety, and a lot of bounce, to the grid today. I was never not enjoying myself. No, wait, I take that back. I did not enjoy MINTER (3D: Money maker), which seems like a pretty contrived -ER word. The MINT makes money. Are the people who work at the mint “MINTER“s? Plausibly, I suppose, but I definitely looked sideways at that answer. But it’s the only answer in the grid that made me react that way. The grid might be a little too proper noun-heavy for some, but all the names (except ALEX) were familiar to me, and the crosses all look fair. The only name that made me go “oh no, not you” was Lou BEGA, and my consternation there was mostly to do with the fact that I misremembered his name as VEGA, and only slightly to do with being reminded of That Song (already stuck in my head and I haven’t even played it yet). What do you call a bad song that is somehow also terribly infectious such that your brain just keeps looping it like you’re possessed? “Ear worm” hardly covers the perniciousness.

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