Earth goddess in “Das Rheingold” / FRI 10-31-25 / Cookie marketing units / Yosemite Sam’s role in “Bugs Bunny’s Christmas Carol” / Opposite of the Latin “odi” / Point in a film when an iconic song sets the scene / City across the Rio Grande from El Paso / Caroline Kepnes thriller written partly in the second person / Cone ___ (iconic Jean Paul Gaultier undergarment)
Constructor: Juliana Tringali Golden
Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium
THEME: none
Word of the Day: ERDA (30A: Earth goddess in “Das Rheingold”) —
The United States Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA) was a United States government organization formed from the split of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in 1975. It assumed the functions of the AEC not assumed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The agency was created as part of the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974, which was passed on October 11, 1974, in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis. The act split the Atomic Energy Commission into two new agencies: the Nuclear Regulatory Commission would regulate the commercial nuclear power industry, while the ERDA would manage the energy research and development, nuclear weapons, and naval reactors programs.
The Energy Research and Development Administration was established on January 19, 1975. The first administrator was Robert Seamans, followed by Robert W. Fri.
In 1977, ERDA was merged with the Federal Energy Administration to form the United States Department of Energy. (wikipedia)
Also:
Erda ( UR-də) is a city in Tooele County, Utah, United States. The population was 4,642 at the 2010 census, a significant increase from the 2000 figure of 2,473. Erda was previously a Census-Designated Place (CDP) and a township but officially received its incorporation certificate in January 2022. (wikipedia)
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[Earth goddess in “Das Rheingold”]!? Such a lovely grid, why, why would you drop this bottom-of-the-barrel crosswordese in there? Because it’s Halloween and you thought you’d exhume the dead? OK, actually, that’s pretty good, I’ll allow it. Just think of ERDA as a spooky little haunting, the Ghost of Crosswords Past. How past? Ha ha, check it out:
Man, those 20th-century folks were really hot for Wagner. That’s one hell of a heat map—towering columns of ERDA from the ’50s through the ’80s, and then Will takes over in the mid-90s and you can practically hear the ERDA supply getting choked off. It’s been twelve years (!!?) since we last saw ERDA. I would absolutely have tanked ERDA if I hadn’t known for sure that Ms. Clooney is an AMAL, not an AMEL—that is, I had ERDE written in there because I’m pretty sure that’s German for “earth” and so that seemed the most plausible answer. I hope you all also knew AMAL, and the other ERDA crossings, because it seems at least plausible that many of you will be in my shoes here (those shoes being size “Never Seen a Wagner Opera In My Life And Sure As Hell Don’t Know Who ERDA Is”). ERDA? Never ERDA her! This is why you should polish your grids within an inch of their lives, and not an inch and a half—I really enjoyed solving this, but I can’t not see ERDA. The puzzle ends up like a fridge full of delicious food and then one small can of half-eaten cat food that you opened a month ago and forgot about (why would it be behind the mayonnaise?! who put it there where I wouldn’t see it?). Before I stepped in ERDA, I was having a pretty good time. I had a pretty good time afterward as well. Hard to express how big an outlier that little answer is.
I’ve never seen a crossword that had its own NEEDLE DROP before (3D: Point in a film when an iconic song sets the scene). No, the puzzle didn’t actually start playing music, but my brain did. Specifically, I’ve been thinking a lot about the NEEDLE DROPs in Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, which was the first movie I saw with my Moviegoing class this year. Which means that as soon as NEEDLE DROP dropped, the first great NEEDLE DROP of that movie (in fact, the whole scene that it’s in) started playing in my head. I can’t find any clips of that scene (introduction of Willa, doing her karate forms in the dojo), so I’ll just play the song
There’s also another perfect NEEDLE DROP at the very end of the movie, but it’s so good that I actually don’t want to tell you the name of the song—in case you plan on seeing the movie but haven’t yet, I don’t want to deprive you of the fresh experience of that moment. For more information, here’s the episode of Wesley Morris’s podcast “Cannonball” where he discusses the movie in detail with guest Sean Fennessey:
The second movie I saw with my Moviegoing class was Roofman, starring Channing TATUM (coincidentally, Blink Twice was the first movie I saw with my Moviegoing class the first time I taught it, last year). Yesterday, I kept pronouncing it like … like it was a last name, like it rhymes with “Goodman,” while everyone else was saying the “Man” part like a separate word, like he was a superhero, Superman or Batman, which is probably the correct way to do it. Also, apparently I pronounce “roof” like a crazy person—my students were all team long-U (i.e. rhymes with “goof”), whereas I … I don’t even know the name for the vowel sound I use, but when I pronounce it, it rhymes with the dog bark sound, “woof.” Seriously, the entire class looked at me like “why are you saying it that way?” and then I just tripped all over the title every time I said it for the rest of the class. Anyway, this puzzle made me remember recent movies I’ve seen and enjoyed, including Sinners (starring HAILEE Steinfeld), and I appreciated that. AYO EDEBIRI (28D: Emmy-winning actress for “The Bear”) also stars in a recent movie that I nearly put on the ballot for my Moviegoing class (they vote each week on what we’ll see), but it just didn’t look that good, so I left it off.
The “ZZ”s also got me into a little trouble, as I had HURRAH before HUZZAH at 27A: Old-fashioned “w00t!” Without those “Z”s, EBENEZER and JUAREZ are hard to see, as you can imagine (or maybe as you experienced yourself). I don’t think I’ve ever seen “Bugs Bunny’s Christmas Carol,” and if I had, I probably would’ve thought SCROOGE before EBENEZER (Yosemite Sam is his full name, as far as I know, so nothing indicated to me that I should be looking for Scrooge’s first name, specifically) (9D: Yosemite Sam’s role in “Bugs Bunny’s Christmas Carol”). I wrote in SUAREZ at first for 10D: City across the Rio Grande from El Paso and then didn’t check the cross and ended up having to hunt down ESECT (?) at the end of the solve (9A: Boot = EJECT). Before that, the only mistakes I had besides HURRAH were CAPRI before CRETE (37D: Island home of what may be the world’s oldest living olive tree (2,000+ years)) and of course … ERDE 🙁
- 35A: Cookie marketing units (GIRL SCOUT TROOPS) — I guess they are “units,” in the military sense. I could tell the answer started GIRL SCOUT, but then hesitated a bit deciding what should come next.
- 39A: Opposite of the Latin “odi” (AMO) — “I hate” v. “I love”
- 41A: Stinky ___ (“Toy Story 2” antagonist) (PETE) — this may as well have been ERDA to me. I don’t remember all the Toy Stories. Not sure I’ve seen them all. It’s likely I only saw the one. This puzzle is full of proper nouns, and if that’s not your jam, I can see how this puzzle might be less than pleasing.
- 25D: Apt anagram of GAMES minus M (SEGA) — so dumb. Just an awkward-ass clue. It’s either an anagram or it’s not. Nothing can be “apt” if you have to “minus” something to get there, come on.
- 55D: British monarch between William and George (ANNE) — that’s William of Orange (of “William & Mary” fame) (1689-1702) and George I (1714-27). William and George are also the names of the likely next two British monarchs as well, as you probably well know.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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