Garment for a vaquero / FRI 7-26-24 / Feat on a beat / Fan associated with a red, white and blue skull logo / Breed once known as the "Tax Collector's Dog" / Radiohead's highest-selling single / Letters of coverage

Constructor: Andy Kravis

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: ANGIE THOMAS (59A: Best-selling author of 2017's "The Hate U Give") —

Angie Thomas (born September 20, 1988) is an American young adult author, best known for writing The Hate U Give (2017). Her second young adult novel, On the Come Up, was released on February 25, 2019. [...] Thomas' initial intention was to write fantasy and middle grade novels; however, she was worried that her stories would not matter. While querying her first manuscript, she began another that would soon turn out to be her first novel, The Hate U Give. While she was a college student, one of her professors suggested that her experiences were unique and that her writing could give a voice to those who had been silenced and whose stories had not been told. During this time, Thomas also heard about the shooting of Oscar Grant on the news. This story, compounded by the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, and Sandra Bland, was a major influence on the novel. [...] The Hate U Give, originally written as a short story, debuted at number one on the New York Times Best Seller list for young adult hardcover books within the first week of its release in 2017. The Hate U Give was written, as Thomas says, to bring light to the controversial issue of police brutality and the Black Lives Matter movement. The book's plot follows a teenage girl, Starr Carter, and how her life is impacted by the death of her friend, Khalil, an unarmed black teen shot by a white police officer. The Hate U Give deals with the effect of police brutality on the communities of those around the victim. (wikipedia)

• • •

I think I'm just tired. I mean, moreso. I ran the second part of the Broome County Parks 5K Series yesterday, and while 5K is a pretty short distance, I am not (I mean *not*) used to running at any time except the morning and this race took place at 6:30PM. That's *PM*. That's basically a night race for me. My body was like "OK what are we doing here? We should be finished with dinner and watching 'Love Boat' right now." It was perfect weather for a run, and I finished somewhere in the middle of the pack (respectable!), so I enjoyed myself, but by the time I finished the race, cooled down, drove the half hour home, and had a celebratory / "cool-down" drink, it was basically my bedtime. But I wasn't tired. So my bedtime was late ... but the alarm, she goes off at 3:45am no matter what. So I'm staggering around this morning, mentally and physically. More than usual. This is the excuse I'm giving myself for blanking on something as easy as BARTLEBY (27A: Melville character with the mantra "I would prefer not to"). I Own A Damned BARTLEBY-themed T-Shirt And I Still Just Stared At BAR- like ????? Sigh. I also had SLAM D-N-- at 36A: Jam session? (SLAM DUNK CONTEST) and could think only of slam-dancing. "SLAM DANCE ... PARTY? No, that's only 14 letters. Uh ... PARTAY?" The brain was not warmed-up to "puzzle-solving" standards. And yet the whole thing still felt pretty easy. When the only hang-ups you have are on things you actually know but that your brain refuses to retrieve or put together, then the problem is you, not the puzzle. 

The puzzle felt a little tepid to me. Plenty of whoosh, but the answers themselves rarely felt that exciting to me. Solid, but plain. If ANGIE THOMAS had meant more to me, I might have felt differently. I saw The Hate U Give on the new/popular YA shelf at the front of my local bookstore every time I went in there for what felt like years. It may still be there. But who wrote it somehow never registered with me. She's the "Word of the Day" today in part so that I can make her name stick. YA is not my thing, but she is a very big deal. I can see how seeing her name in the grid would excite some solvers. So that answer was original / different / interesting. But not enough of the rest of the grid was. For me. But again, I am willing to chalk my less-than-excited response up to night race-induced sleep deprivation brain fog. It's 4:30am and I haven't eaten more than a handful of nuts/raisins since noon yesterday! Basically if anything f's with my routine, I fall apart and forget how to live. I don't even know how to end this paragraph. It's bad. Let's get me to coffee, quickly, OK? OK.

I had several quibbles today. I am really not a fan of the CITY, COUNTRY answer, so LIMA, PERU felt bad to me (5D: Capital city whose main governmental building is known as the "House of Pizarro"). I get that you built yourself a grid where you require an 8-letter "U"-ending word, but the whole CITY, COUNTRY thing always feels so arbitrary. Of course LIMA, PERU. What other LIMA is it gonna be? Seems unlikely that the "House of Pizarro" would be in LIMA, OHIO. I'd be mad at PARIS, FRANCE too, the way I'm mad at ERIEPA every time I see it. Feels contrived, somehow. Also, I've been in English departments ... forever, basically, and I swear I have never heard the term "LIT CRIT" irl (30D: Rhyming subject for an English major). Every time I see CRIT clued this way,  I cringe, and seeing the full LIT CRIT was no better. CRIT is a crossword contrivance. Bah. Plus the whole answer creates a really unpleasant "IT" pile-up in the eastern part of the grid. Call it the LIT CRIT GIT PIT. And hey, are OLIVEs really "divisive" (63A: Divisive pizza topping)? Anchovies, sure, that's canon, but OLIVEs? More than other toppings? Weird. OLIVEs rule, though it's true I rarely have them on pizza. If I found them on my pizza, however, I would not mind. "Divisive"? You folks are weird.

Other things:

• 18A: Departure announcement ("I'M OUTTA HERE") — wrote in "I'M OUT OF HERE" and was mad it wasn't the more properly colloquial "I'M OUTTA HERE" ... but then it was. It was ... that. More evidence of a brain on Power Save mode.
• 55D: Subatomic particle named for a Greek letter (PION) — I went with MUON, which is also a Subatomic particle named for a Greek letter, so I don't feel too bad.
• 33D: Feat on a beat (SCOOP) — another one where my brain just didn't have the processing power. "Beat" made me think "cop" ... or else "music" ... and I had S-OOP before I had any idea what was happening. It's a news beat. You probably knew that by now.
• 10D: "I didn't see you there!" ("OH, HI!") — a fine answer, but it dupes the "OH" in "OH, BEHAVE!" (38D: Catchphrase for Austin Powers). I figure you get one "OH" per puzzle. That seems like plenty.
• 58D: Mother of the Titans (GAEA) — I never know if it's GAEA or GAIA. That's because there's no way to know. Same figure from classical mythology, different spellings ... just 'cause.
• 37D: Fan associated with a red, white and blue skull logo (DEADHEAD) — me: "Wait ... fans of The Punisher have a name!?!?" All I could picture were those awful "Back The Blue"-type stickers that dudes put on their trucks to look tough. I guess they generally lack a red component, but that skull logo is a fav of the flag-wavey types, so ... yeah, this one confused me. The Dead, like YA literature, is really not my thing, though I'm vaguely aware of the skull thing. 

[No]

[Yes]

• 46A: Breed once known as the "Tax Collector's Dog" (DOBERMAN) — this is a grim, grim way to clue the poor pooch. Economic oppression and violence against the underclass: not the image I'm looking for on a breezy Friday. See also the colonialist clue on LIMA, PERU. Lots of ways to clue LIMA without name-checking the guy most closely associated with the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire. 

• 45D: Two-piece? (DUET) — I wanted DYAD. Again, as with MUON, I don't feel too bad about the mistake.
• 49D: "... oops, my mistake" ("... OR NOT") — This clue rings wrong to my ear. There's absolutely nothing about "... OR NOT" that suggests apology or acknowledgment of error. Tonally, the clue and answer here are on completely different planets.
• 1A: Letters of coverage (SPF) — first clue I looked at, and immediately there was sputtering. First, IOU. As in "I will cover this bet ... later." No. Wrong. Ooh, OK, how about cell phone coverage? LTE! ... no. Damn. I was so proud of that one. Then, just before I abandoned the answer all together, sunscreen coverage came to me. SPF! I used a 50 SPF sunscreen before the race yesterday. I'm unsunburned, but, as we've seen today, perhaps not entirely undamaged. 

See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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Classic children's song about a lark / THU 7-25-24 / Slogan in the 2016 Republican presidential primary / Hit the ball well, in baseball slang / English town known for its mineral springs / Singer who coaches on "The Voice," familiarly / First actor to portray a Bond villain (Le Chiffre, 1954) / Willa Cather novel set in 1880s Nebraska / Major fantasy sports platform / Spanish region with a namesake wine

Constructor: Damon Gulczynski

Relative difficulty: Easy (as rebus puzzles go)

THEME: GOES OUT WITH A BANG (37A: Finishes in grand style, like the answers to the starred clues?) — theme answers are brand names and titles and slogans that end (or "go out") with a "!"; that "!" (which, like all punctuation, would normally not be represented in a crossword answer) is represented by the letters "BANG" in all the crosses. So, it's a rebus puzzle where you have "!" in the Across and "BANG" in the Down (“bang” being an informal term for an exclamation point): 

Theme answers:

• CHIPS AHOY! / SHEBANG (21A: *Nabisco cookie brand / 9D: The whole ___)
• YAHOO! / SLAM-BANG (25A: *Major fantasy sports platform / 14D: Exciting in a noisy or violent way)
• O, PIONEERS! / BANGLES (53A: *Willa Cather novel set in 1880s Nebraska / 57D: Rigid bracelets)
• JEB! / HEADBANGS (61A: *Slogan in the 2016 Republican presidential primary / 44D: Rocks out to heavy metal, say)

Word of the Day: "ALOUETTE" (39D: Classic children's song about a lark) —

 

"Alouette" (pronounced [alwɛt]) is a popular Quebecois children's song, commonly thought to be about plucking the feathers from a lark. Although it is in French, it is well known among speakers of other languages; in this respect, it is similar to "Frère Jacques". Many US Marines and other Allied soldiers learnt the song while serving in France during World War I and took it home with them, passing it on to their children and grandchildren. [...] "Alouette" has become a symbol of French Canada for the world, an unofficial national song. Today, the song is used to teach French and English-speaking children in Canada, and others learning French around the world, the names of body parts. Singers will point to or touch the part of their body that corresponds to the word being sung in the song. (wikipedia)

• • •

This one mostly worked for me, though the nature of the theme made it Awfully easy. All the rebus squares come at the ends of their Across answers and all those squares are "BANG!"s. Once you pick up the gimmick (which was not terribly hard), you aren't likely to be tortured by the potentially destructive presence of hidden rebus squares. You know they're out there, and you know they're "BANG!"s, so if a corner isn't coming together as easily as it should, you just have to ask yourself, "could a 'BANG!' go somewhere in here," and voila! Actually, I never really had to ask. The "BANG!"s seemed to announce themselves, loudly, as you might expect (they're "BANG!"s, after all, not whimpers). I had CHIPS AHOY and then extra square—checked the cross on that square and could see clearly that the answer was SHEBANG. And that was that. Well, at that point, I didn't know the theme concept—I didn't know why we were doing "BANG!"s—but like 20 seconds later the revealer showed up, and that cracked it. "BANG!"s ahoy! There's something slightly monotonous about the theme, and the revealer was kind of anticlimactic (it explained, but it didn't surprise) ... and yet whatever slightly tired feelings I was having about the theme were all blown away by one glorious, bygone slogan; a mere syllable that sent my jaded heart soaring. That slogan, that syllable, that short burst of low-key energy that is perhaps the only amusing memory I have of the 2016 presidential race? Why, it's JEB!, of course. JEB! I laughed for real. The guts you gotta have to bring that one back. The confidence that anyone will remember! I am surprised by how much I loved remembering the delightful quaintness and completely ineffectual "enthusiasm" of that slogan. Man ... good times. Dude had no idea what hit him. Then the election happened and we were all JEB! Oof. See, I don't like remembering the whole 2016 SHEBANG. I prefer remembering *just* the plucky, go-get-'em slogan. The three letters least likely to precede an exclamation point. J-E-B! The little engine that couldn't, god bless him.

[it hurts to watch]

Oh, look at that, the puzzle is 16 wide. Didn't even notice. I guess your options were: go with GO OUT... and a narrow 14 or go with GOES OUT... and expand to 16. Wise choice. Give yourself room. 

I was a little disappointed in patches with the short fill, which ran a little olden, especially olden-namey: ALEC ESTEE IVOR LORNA, 20th-century stalwarts all. There was also APERS and ITTY and ATSEA and AGAR and ODED and other hardcore repeaters of various levels of irksomeness. But the theme was strong enough to carry the day, and some of the longer answers had real pizzazz. I do enjoy a MOCHA LATTE and I especially enjoy PETER LORRE (30D: First actor to portray a Bond villain (Le Chiffre, 1954)) whose name I was happy to see in full today (Have you seen M, you should see M ... also The Maltese Falcon ... but I digress). I had no idea (or forgot) that "ALOUETTE" was about a lark. I think it was the name of a cheese when I was growing up, so the whole "plucking" thing didn't quite make sense in French class, at first. Yeah, here we go: a cheese spread, actually:

As for the song: it's an oddly jaunty and sunny tune considering the topic of the lyrics appears to be bird torture. Probably one of those things you're just not supposed to think too hard about. 

Bullets:

• 46A: Get more of the same, maybe (REORDER) — there used to be a kind of rule (a soft rule, but a reasonable rule, I think) that you weren't supposed to repeat letter strings of longer than, say, 4 letters. It's hard to imagine someone even noticing let alone caring about having PARAGON and AGONY in the same grid, for instance, but get over 4 letters and the duplicated letter strings can start to become conspicuous. I mention this because I found "ORDER" crossing "ORDER" (i.e. REORDER crossing BORDERED) kind of jarring. If they hadn't been crossing, I probably wouldn't have noticed. But they were and I did.
• 26A: Feature of "woulda," "coulda" or "shoulda" (SILENT L) — I love this clue. It's such great misdirection. Gets you looking at the slanginess of those "a" endings and then hits you with "Psych! It was the 'L' I was talking about all along! Yeah, I coulda (!) just used 'would,' 'could,' and 'should,' but where's the fun in that!?" Brilliant.

• 22D: Counsel: Abbr. (ATT.) — I was telling myself this was short for "attaché" right up until I started writing this bullet point, when I realized "oh it's just 'attorney,' duh."
• 35D: Oscar-winning Hathaway (ANNE) — as you know if you read the P.S. on Tuesday's blog, I was inspired by the puzzle to watch The Princess Diaries earlier this week and it was indeed enjoyable. Yes there are tiresome Disney qualities to it, and the treatment of high school is, like most movie treatments of high school, eye-rollingly simplistic and caricatured, but ANNE Hathaway and Julie Andrews and especially Heather Matarazzo (as the best friend) are all super charming and funny. Oh, and Hector Elizondo is in it! He makes everything better. And he and Andrews are kinda hot together (Andrews is the widowed queen of Genovia (!) and Elizondo's her bodyguard / driver who becomes a kind of low-key love interest ... they dance ... it's nice). Mandy Moore is also in it. Garry Marshall directs. There's lots and lots and lots of great shots of San Francisco. It's not Vertigo or Bullitt, but you could do worse.

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]

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