REX Conventioneer's passport / THU 6-25-26 / Sharansky who wrote the memoir "Fear No Evil" / Country rocker Steve with t
Posted: Thu Jun 25, 2026 9:43 am
Constructor: Tarun Krishnamurthy
Relative difficulty: Easy
THEME: INSIDER / TRADING (63A: With 65-Across, market no-no ... or a hint to entering the answers to the starred clues) — blocks of letters "inside" the theme answers (in shaded squares) "trade" places, creating new (unclued) words and phrases
Theme answers:
Natan Sharansky (Hebrew: נתן שרנסקי; born 20 January 1948) is a Ukrainian-born, Israeli politician, professional chess player and author. He served as Chairman of the Executive for the Jewish Agency from June 2009 to August 2018, and currently serves as Chairman for the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP), an American non-partisan organization. A former Soviet dissident, he spent nine years imprisoned as a refusenik during the 1970s and 1980s. [...] Fear No Evil is a book by the Soviet-Israeli activist and politician Natan Sharansky about his struggle to immigrate to Israel from the former Soviet Union (USSR). The book tells the story of the Jewish refuseniks in the USSR in the 1970s, his show trial on charges of espionage, incarceration by the KGB and liberation. (wikipedia)• • •
Gotta get out of the house very early today, so this'll have to be quick. Quickish. Despite the fact that the theme answers were probably discovered by a computer program, and despite the puzzle's interest in things I'm not personally that interested in (gaming, Marvel movies), and despite the puzzle's being a little on the easy side for my tastes, I really enjoyed this. At first I was like "why do the shaded squares spell out gibberish, I hate gibberish!?" but then I realized that the entire reconfigured answer was a viable (if unclued) answer, and the shaded squares weren't supposed to, and didn't need to, spell anything. The dark bars between the "traded" parts of the answer create a bit of visual confusion (me, rearranging BAD RAPS: "What the hell are BRAP ADS? What's a "brap" and why does it need ads?"), but once you get your bearings, this theme is actually very easy to work through. Six themers and a long revealer, and the fill holds up OK. Yes, I will take this. Again, would've liked more of a challenge, but I say that almost every Thursday (and other days ending in "day") now, so there's no surprise there. If it has to be easier than I'd like, at least the experience of solving it was pleasant.
There's a lot of overcommon fill (ESSO ESA SID NSYNC ATBAT ANODES PTA NEA TSP BAA ORES OREOS NEO NSA), but somehow that never became grating today. Nothing ever made me recoil or cringe or groan or any of the other negative reactions I sometimes have with creakily filled puzzles. Mostly I just liked watching the answers change into other answers, and I was happy that whatever subpar fill there was didn't interfere with that. I didn't get bogged down in the less-than-lovely stuff, and so I was better able to appreciate the theme, and the other nice bits of fill as they came along (like EGO BOOSTS and OVERTHINK and the HOT GLUE BLEEPS, which would be a great band name, though it's actually pretty hard to say without tripping over your tongue. My main negative feeling today was the indignation I felt on behalf of NATAN Last, who really should've been the subject of the NATAN clue. I mean, imagine you work for Will and then write tons of crosswords for the NYTXW (and elsewhere) and then write a whole-ass book about crosswords (a well-received book, I might add—Across the Universe: The Past, Present, and Future of the Crossword Puzzle) and then your not-terribly-common / not-shared-with-a-celebrity name shows up in the puzzle and the clue is somehow not about you? What's a guy gotta do to get some grid recognition!?
This is just the third appearance of NATAN, with the previous two clues going once to this same Sharansky guy we got in today's puzzle (1993) and then once to no one in particular (2018) ([Hebrew name meaning "he has given"]). I guess Saransky remains the more (most?) famous NATAN, but I have no way of measuring NATAN fame, as the only NATAN I know is Last. If his fame outside crosswords seems limited—who cares? We're not outside crosswords. We're inside crosswords. Literally, that is where we are. Anyway, I learned about a new NATAN today. He seems like a crossworthy NATAN. He's just not my NATAN.
Bullets:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/JkCjhh8uI ... k1oEcZz2d6
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
=============================
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Relative difficulty: Easy
THEME: INSIDER / TRADING (63A: With 65-Across, market no-no ... or a hint to entering the answers to the starred clues) — blocks of letters "inside" the theme answers (in shaded squares) "trade" places, creating new (unclued) words and phrases
Theme answers:
- BAD / RAPS => BRA P/ADS (17A: *They may result in people being wrongly sent to jail)
- WEE L/ASS => WEAS/ELS (18A: *Bonny young girl)
- TRAIN/ERS => TER/RAINS (23A: *Exercise experts)
- FEM/INIST => FINE / MIST (35A: *Advocate of women's equality)
- "STEP / ON IT!" => STON/E PIT (43A: *"Let's pick up the pace!"
- WEB/INARS => WIN/E BARS (54A: *Some online courses)
Natan Sharansky (Hebrew: נתן שרנסקי; born 20 January 1948) is a Ukrainian-born, Israeli politician, professional chess player and author. He served as Chairman of the Executive for the Jewish Agency from June 2009 to August 2018, and currently serves as Chairman for the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP), an American non-partisan organization. A former Soviet dissident, he spent nine years imprisoned as a refusenik during the 1970s and 1980s. [...] Fear No Evil is a book by the Soviet-Israeli activist and politician Natan Sharansky about his struggle to immigrate to Israel from the former Soviet Union (USSR). The book tells the story of the Jewish refuseniks in the USSR in the 1970s, his show trial on charges of espionage, incarceration by the KGB and liberation. (wikipedia)• • • 
Gotta get out of the house very early today, so this'll have to be quick. Quickish. Despite the fact that the theme answers were probably discovered by a computer program, and despite the puzzle's interest in things I'm not personally that interested in (gaming, Marvel movies), and despite the puzzle's being a little on the easy side for my tastes, I really enjoyed this. At first I was like "why do the shaded squares spell out gibberish, I hate gibberish!?" but then I realized that the entire reconfigured answer was a viable (if unclued) answer, and the shaded squares weren't supposed to, and didn't need to, spell anything. The dark bars between the "traded" parts of the answer create a bit of visual confusion (me, rearranging BAD RAPS: "What the hell are BRAP ADS? What's a "brap" and why does it need ads?"), but once you get your bearings, this theme is actually very easy to work through. Six themers and a long revealer, and the fill holds up OK. Yes, I will take this. Again, would've liked more of a challenge, but I say that almost every Thursday (and other days ending in "day") now, so there's no surprise there. If it has to be easier than I'd like, at least the experience of solving it was pleasant.
There's a lot of overcommon fill (ESSO ESA SID NSYNC ATBAT ANODES PTA NEA TSP BAA ORES OREOS NEO NSA), but somehow that never became grating today. Nothing ever made me recoil or cringe or groan or any of the other negative reactions I sometimes have with creakily filled puzzles. Mostly I just liked watching the answers change into other answers, and I was happy that whatever subpar fill there was didn't interfere with that. I didn't get bogged down in the less-than-lovely stuff, and so I was better able to appreciate the theme, and the other nice bits of fill as they came along (like EGO BOOSTS and OVERTHINK and the HOT GLUE BLEEPS, which would be a great band name, though it's actually pretty hard to say without tripping over your tongue. My main negative feeling today was the indignation I felt on behalf of NATAN Last, who really should've been the subject of the NATAN clue. I mean, imagine you work for Will and then write tons of crosswords for the NYTXW (and elsewhere) and then write a whole-ass book about crosswords (a well-received book, I might add—Across the Universe: The Past, Present, and Future of the Crossword Puzzle) and then your not-terribly-common / not-shared-with-a-celebrity name shows up in the puzzle and the clue is somehow not about you? What's a guy gotta do to get some grid recognition!?
This is just the third appearance of NATAN, with the previous two clues going once to this same Sharansky guy we got in today's puzzle (1993) and then once to no one in particular (2018) ([Hebrew name meaning "he has given"]). I guess Saransky remains the more (most?) famous NATAN, but I have no way of measuring NATAN fame, as the only NATAN I know is Last. If his fame outside crosswords seems limited—who cares? We're not outside crosswords. We're inside crosswords. Literally, that is where we are. Anyway, I learned about a new NATAN today. He seems like a crossworthy NATAN. He's just not my NATAN.
Bullets:
- 7A: Gamer's state of invincibility enabled by a cheat code (GOD MODE) — I tried LOOK and PEEK before GAWK (7D: Get an eyeful), so though I was fairly certain I was dealing with a "mode," the GOD part eluded me for a bit. As soon as I got the "G" I was like "d'oh! GOD MODE. Yes, I've at least heard of that" (this is not always the case with video game clues).
- 56D: Preceding time (RUN-UP) — as five-letter answers go, this one's great. Hard to make me like, or even notice, a short answer like this, but there's something about RUN-UP that's slightly slangy and very bright. Peppy, even. Why AT BAT feels limp but RUN-UP feels snappy, I don't really know. (side note: I had AWAKE before AT BAT (1D: Up)).
- 21D: Falcons' group (USAF) — so not the football Falcons (the ATL Falcons), but the Falcons of the United States Air Force Academy. They're the Falcons, the way Michigan is the Wolverines. I thought maybe there was some famous USAF squadron called the Falcons, but no, just the team name. Here's a new clue for NOVA:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/JkCjhh8uI ... k1oEcZz2d6
- 58D: 1492 caravel (NINA) — a caravel is a small sailing ship. Even if you didn't know that, 1492 should've kinda given this one away. NINA leads all Columbus's ships in terms of total crossword appearances, though PINTA has shown up an awful lot (122 appearances), and for a ten-letter answer, SANTA MARIA also gets a ton of action (19 appearances, though not seen since 2009).
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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