The New York Times crossword puzzle
Across
1 Modern-day scrapbooks, of a sort
16 Common cybersecurity measure
17 Successfully strike a delicate balance
18 Home of the Kingdom of Dahomey, today
19 Balanced
20 Like a proposal in Congress that has zero chance of passing, in brief
21 ___ Morgenstern, author of “The Night Circus”
22 Heavyweight wrestlers
24 Sign … or signature
25 Org. that employs Hank on “Breaking Bad”
26 Five-time Grammywinning jazz pianist McCoy ___
27 Something large often stored upside down
28 Does
29 See eye to eye
30 Auto parts brand owned by GM
33 Party leader?
34 Special coffee shop offerings
35 Sandwich made with a telera roll
36 Shiny button material
37 Europe, Asia and America
38 Some vaccine administrators, in brief
41 The low, low price of
42 Refuses to keep going
43 Handy trick
44 Molecule that can interfere in gene expression
45 Member of an elite force
46 Watercolor, clay and others
47 Academic who works with many different schools, maybe
51 Sierra Nevada offering
52 Mediocre at best
1 Place to let sleeping dogs lie
2 Arrival announcement
3 Literary domain of Peter the Magnificent and Susan the Gentle
4 Marketing link
5 ___ vital (life force, from the French)
6 Fire-engine ___
7 Hearing monitor, for short
8 Rhyming arrangements, e.g.
9 Comic Noah who wrote the autobiographical “Born a Crime”
10 Actress Amanda
Down
11 Many a tournament
12 ___ and ran
13 “Good ___!”
14 Like a dirge
15 Athletic items never purchased individually
22 Aligns
23 Command after an accidental deletion
24 Kind of ray
26 Piña colada topper
27 Goes for
28 One of two Tudor kings
29 Tangle in an office
30 Not what you’d expect
31 Madiba, for Nelson Mandela
32 States
33 Loud bird sound
35 Capital on the Gulf of Finland
37 Words sung on the same notes as “twinkle,” in a different nursery rhyme
38 Branching out from the center
39 Longtime police procedural that ended in 2023, informally
40 Expert with figures?
42 Wood for smoking andouille sausage
43 Philosopher who was a major influence on Marx
45 Hissy
46 One whose distance may be measured by the yard?
48 Division of the Treasury Dept.
49 Black ___
50 West Coast news inits.