Savory South Asian rice cake / WED 4-8-26 / Perry of pop / Traditional samurai hairstyles / Chant heard at the end of “Hot Hot Hot” / Enhancing accessories / Underground scurrier / “I’m afraid not,” quaintly / Popular flavor of bubble tea / Half of a darting motion

Constructor: Philippe Monfiston

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: musical puns — familiar phrases where the first part of the phrase has been replaced by a musical term that sounds roughly like it:

Theme answers:

• CODA SILENCE (“code of silence”) (18A: Audience’s reverent response to a symphony finale?)
• SONATA THING (“so not a thing”) (22A: That certain je ne sais quoi in Beethoven’s “Moonlight”?)
• STANZA CHANCE (“stands a chance”) (36A: Opportunity for a choral understudy?)
• FORZA MOMENT (“for the moment”) (53A: When to play a note with sudden strong emphasis?)
• ARIA KIDDING (“Are you kidding?”) (58A: “What’s Opera, Doc?”,” e.g.?)

Word of the Day: forza (see 53A) —

FORT-sah

[Italian, force]

Often seen as con forza, “with force”; a directive to perform the indicated passage of a composition forcefully, emphatically, or vigorously. (OnMusic Dictionary)

• • •

There’s a wacky creative energy here that I like, but the theme is a little rough around the edges. First of all, this is one theme that kind of (kinda!) needs a revealer. I thought the theme was just “repronouncing ‘a’ endings” … but the “a” ending of SONATA isn’t repronounced at all. I didn’t get that there was a musical throughline at all til I was done (mostly because I think of STANZA as a poetic term, not a musical one—I taught stanzaic poetry just yesterday). When I finally realized that the puns were all musical, I was on the one hand happier, since that makes the theme tighter than I’d imagined, but on the other hand more disappointed, because I really needed the punch of a revealer to tie it all together, to give it a particular sense of purpose. You could do first word puns from any area of knowledge, but why? Why do all the puns end in “a” but not all of them actually pun on the “a”? Still, despite these nagging questions, I was mostly on board with this theme—with one major exception. My only absolute “nope!” moment of the solve. These puns all work very, very well, if you just read them straight. CODA SILENCE: if I say that out loud, as written, you are definitely going to hear “code of silence.” STANZA CHANCE also hits its mark (“stands a chance”). ARIA KIDDING? and SONATA THING require slight shifts in emphasis (hitting the “SO” and not the “NAT” in the first case, the changing of the interrogative into the indicative mood in the second case), but close enough for crosswords, for sure. 

But then there’s FORZA. And that word does not sound like “for the.” It sounds like … well, see “Word of the Day,” above. “FORT-sah.” It’s an Italian word that retains its Italian pronunciation in common usage by English speakers. I don’t speak Italian and I’m not a musician and still I think of that term as being pronounced “FORT-sah.” Pronunciation-based themes are always dicey—people love to argue about slight regional differences. And I’m aware, from a bit of looking around online, that some English speakers say “FOR-za,” which, if you imagine that the line is spoken by someone with a German accent, you can imagine sounds like “for the,” but for me the reality of that voiced “t” sound in “forza” really messes things up. If pronouncing “forza” the correct Italian way is not in fact standard practice or is considered “pretentious” or whatever, I’m sure you’ll let me know. Anyway, I still admire the theme. I just think the execution is a bit ragged.

I really thought the SONATA thing was a pun on “it’s not a thing,” as in (?) “it’s no big deal,” or maybe as in “it does not actually exist,” so I was happy (ish) to realize (later) that the pun was on the (fairly contemporary) colloquial phrase “that is SO not a thing” (a version of “that does not actually exist,” but in this version, the “SO” is a word that is there for emphasis, and the “O” doesn’t have to be elided into “s’not a thing,” which is what I was doing at first). 

I had real trouble getting started, as I had ADO for DIN (24A: Commotion), and even after I fixed that, I couldn’t come up with either ARCADE or ADD-ONS, even after I had several crosses. I forgive myself for ADD-ONS—that clue is super-ambiguous (3D: Enhancing accessories); I thought the “accessories” were fashion accessories—but I do not forgive myself for ARCADE. Should’ve remembered that non-video-game meaning of ARCADE (1D: Covered passageway). There’s an ARCADE in Ann Arbor that I used to go through all the time, right there near the far NW corner of the Diag, you know, runs parallel to Liberty, from State to … whatever the next street over is … there used to be a travel agent in there when I was in grad school, though I can’t remember what’s in there now. Annnnnnnyway, Go Blue.

Other slow spots were annoyingly slow because of ambiguity. Never fun to have to just sit and wait for a [NOTE] + [MAJOR or MINOR] answer to fill itself in from crosses (65A: Key of Brahms’s Symphony No. 4). And [Half of a darting motion]? Which half? I don’t know! (Funny that IDK (“I don’t know”) was the cross there). I misread the TARO clue (57A: Popular flavor of bubble tea)—thought it was asking for a brand, not a flavor (why? the word “flavor” is right in the clue!) so I took one look at TA-O and wrote in TAZO (an actual tea brand, though not a bubble tea brand, if such a thing exists). 

[TAZO]

[TARO]

Bullets:

• 1A: “I’m afraid not,” quaintly (“ALAS, NO“) — ugh, quaintness. This answer was another reason that NW corner played slightly slow for me. For more off-putting quaintness, see “I DIG” (56A: “Groovy, man”) (“I DIG” and “Groovy, man” are from completely different decades and cultural universes, btw)
• 26A: Knuckled rub to the scalp (NOOGIE) — such a weird way to phrase it? “Knuckled,” with a “d”?? You can drop that “d” entirely and the clue still makes sense. More sense, maybe. “How would you like your rub?” “Hmmm, let’s see … do you offer knuckled rubs?” “No, I’m sorry, just pickled rubs, smoked rubs, or pan-seared rubs.” “Hmmm … I think I’ll just have the crème brûlée.” 
• 62A: Respond, as a pupil might (DILATE) — I think this was supposed to trick you into thinking the student kind of “pupil,” but that only occurred to me after the fact. I had enough letters in place to see DILATE pretty quickly.
• 36D: Underground scurrier (SEWER RAT) — an original answer, but … it’s hard to say I’m “happy” to find a SEWER RAT scurrying around my puzzle (or anywhere). You get a revulsion twofer here: sewers and rats! 
• 56D: Savory South Asian rice cake (IDLI) — bah! My Indian food lexicon failed me today. I’ve def seen IDLI before, but it just wasn’t there for me today. Maybe the SEWER RAT got to it, IDK.

That’s all for today. See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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