One-named author of Dog of Flanders / MON 5-20-13 / So-called crime dog of public service ads / Stereotypical airhead of old / 1960s chess champ Mikhail / 2008 Tina Fey/Amy Poehler comedy / He's priest per Ogden Nash / First explorer to sail directly from Europe to India

Constructor: Tim Croce

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging

THEME: AMA (68A: Professional org. ending eight answers in this puzzle) — just what the clue says

Theme answers:

• 18A: Caribbean resort island (GRAND BAHAMA)
• 20A: 2008 Tina Fey/Amy Poehler comedy ("BABY MAMA") 
• 29A: Many a 1930s soap opera (RADIO DRAMA)
• 34A: Desert of Chile (ATACAMA)
• 36A: 3-D art project (DIORAMA)
• 43A: White House girl (MALIA OBAMA) 
• 54A: "He's a priest," per Ogden Nash (ONE-L LAMA)
• 58A: First explorer to sail directly from Europe to India (VASCO DA GAMA)

Word of the Day: OUIDA (30D: One-named author of "A Dog of Flanders") —

Ouida (1 January 1839 – 25 January 1908) was the pseudonym of the English novelist Maria Louise Ramé (although she preferred to be known as Marie Louise de la Ramée). [...] She moved into the Langham Hotel, London in 1867. There she wrote in bed, by candlelight, with the curtains drawn and surrounded by purple flowers. She ran up huge hotel and florists bills, and commanded soirees that included soldiers, politicians, literary lights (including Oscar Wilde, Algernon Swinburne, Robert Browning and Wilkie Collins), and artists (including John Millais). Many of her stories and characters were based upon people she invited to her salons at The Langham. Ouida was described by William Allingham in his diary of 1872 as of short stature, with a "sinister, clever face" and with a "voice like a carving knife." (wikipedia)

• • •

Not much to say. Cute idea, but not a very strong or complex or thoughtful one, so the puzzle gets by by sheer brute force—we get a truckload of theme answers, which ends up compromising the fill a bit, in a completely predictable and probably unavoidable way. OUIDA is terrible on any day, but on Monday? (And by "terrible" I mean it's high-end crosswordese that no one but no one intentionally puts in their puzzle—it's desperation fill, no matter how interesting this OUIDA person may be). I already wrote about how dog-tired I am of all the Nash lama nonsense, but here, where you gotta build up the number of theme answers ... why not? It's Monday, it fits the theme, it's not offensive, OK. ATACAMA is also not in any way Monday fill, but who cares? So it's a Monday-type theme w/ Tuesday+-level difficulty. It happens. Singular DORITO always looks weird to me (31A: Piquant triangular snack chip). The NE corner is kind of dreck-full. I didn't even see TAL til just now (16A: 1960s chess champ Mikhail). Not good. Then the plurals of crosswordese ELI and ARIA, and then CLASSA (13D: Minor-league baseball level). But again, this is what happens when you have So Many Theme Answers. Only thing I found genuinely off-putting, though (besides OUIDA, an author I've never heard of in real life, whose works I've never seen in print, who never came up ever not once even in conversation during my entire time getting a Ph.D. in literature, etc.) was the revealer. It assumes that the solver is an idiot (DUMB DORA asked, "Uh .... what's the theme?") (3D: Stereotypical airhead of old). Also, you don't pronounce it "AMA"—it's an initialism, not an acronym, so you say the letters individually. So A.M.A. is both comically superfluous and just ... off.


Also, SLATY. Just in case you missed it: SLATY. That's right up there with SUETY in terms of curb appeal. (52D: Dull blue-gray)

The end.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld