Bespectacled chipmunk / FRI 3-6-15 / Actress Anna of Mom / Cozy lie per Susan Sontag / FiveThirtyEight owner / Schwarzenegger movie with oxymoronic title / Success is great deodorant speaker / Onetime 2600 Jr maker / Divine trees in book of dead / Washington's first secretary of war / Jazz fusion artist with Elektric band / Bassist Cook of Creedence Clearwater Revival

Constructor: David Phillips

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: none

Word of the Day: Anna FARIS (2D: Actress Anna of "Mom") —

Anna Kay Faris^[1] (/ˈɑːnə ˈfærɨs/;^[2] born November 29, 1976) is an American actress and singer. She is known for her comedic roles as Cindy Campbell in the Scary Movie film series (2000–2006), Kelly in Lost in Translation (2003), Shelley in The House Bunny(2008), Serena in Waiting... (2005), Hannah in My Super Ex-Girlfriend (2006), the voice of Sam Sparks in the animated film Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009) and its sequel Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 (2013), Rachel Johnson in Yogi Bear (2010), Ally Darling in What's Your Number? (2011), Zoey in The Dictator (2012) and Chloe in I Give It a Year (2013).

On television, she has played the role of Christy Plunkett on the CBS sitcom Mom since 2013 and appeared as Erica in the final season of the NBC sitcom Friends (2004). (wikipedia)

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Not interesting enough, not hard enough. The clusterf*ck of names in the NE (TOKLAS, KNOX, ATARI with a CORP somehow attached…) took me a little effort to put together, but otherwise, every corner's long answers fell one-two-three. Slightly ridiculous. Actually, I botched AFC SOUTH out of the gate (I had AFC NORTH because … I still can't accept Indianapolis as a Southern city …) but got AMPLE and FARIS and realized my mistake very quickly thereafter. Easy entree to the middle, and once EY- dropped into the front of 33-Across, I knew before looking at the clue that I was dealing with EYE-something. Clue made answer, and the cross-referenced answer, instantly obvious. I might have been aided there by *just* having read a 1980 Doonesbury collection entitled A Tad Overweight, But Violet Eyes to Die For (Trudeau did a run of strips making fun of Taylor's then-husband, Republican John Warner, during his bid for the Senate in Virginia in 1978), but I think I would've nailed that one regardless. So, very quickly, my grid looked like this:

The remaining corners were done with virtually no thought. We don't have DEL TACO out here, so that DE---CO took some thinking. That was virtually the only remaining answer that took some thinking. TWOS and DEL TACO gave me enough to get all the Acrosses along the top of the SW, and then all the Downs immediately thereafter. No struggle.

Junky fill down there made the remaining few squares tougher than the entire rest of the corner had been, but even LIGERS and COREA and SML and ANADEM and MEDI (frowny faces, all) weren't *that* tough. That left just the SE, where pretty much the same thing happened. Got front ends of long Acrosses, then *all* the long Acrosses in quick succession:

Ten seconds later, the puzzle was done. It's not just that the puzzle was easy—it simply wasn't that engaging. Entirely adequate, but also ho-hum. Nothing more to say. See you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. if any of you know the screenwriter Akiva Goldsman, please let him know I have mail for him. Someone sent something to him care of me, for reasons that remain Utterly Mysterious …