Deep blue dye / TUE 6-23-15 / Spanish liqueur / Wisconsin v landmark 1972 Supreme Court case on religious freedom / Stark Game of Thrones protagonist

Constructor: Jules P. Markey

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: "ROAD to BALI" — word ladder going from ROAD to BALI. Also, four theme answer related to the movie:

Word Ladder: ROAD (1A) TOAD TOLD BOLD BALD BALI (60A)

Theme answers:

• BROMANTIC COMEDY (16A: Modern-day genre for the 1952 film whose title is suggested by a word ladder starting at 1-Across)
• HOPE AND CROSBY (24A: The film's headliners)
• DOROTHY LAMOUR (40A: The film's co-star)
• SONG AND DANCE MEN (52A: Occupations of 24-Across in the film)

Word of the Day: Wisconsin v. YODER (29D: Wisconsin v. ___ (landmark 1972 Supreme Court case on religious freedom)) —

Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205 (1972), is the case in which the United States Supreme Court found that Amish children could not be placed under compulsory education past 8th grade. The parents' fundamental right to freedom of religionoutweighed the state's interest in educating its children. The case is often cited as a basis for parents' right to educate their children outside of traditional private or public schools. (wikipedia)

• • •

Er … no. This is loaded with problems. I don't care if you love the movie—that's not the point (I'm going to bet that most solvers have barely heard of and likely never seen the movie … I mean, not you, of course—you're quite the movie buff. But most.). The point is 1. word ladder, yuck. The worst of ladders. A hackneyed puzzle conceit if there ever was one. 2. BROMANTIC COMEDY is not a thing. Sorry, but no. Check out its wikipedia page—front-loaded w/ warning flags. I see that a few publications have used the term, but it's simply not common enough to qualify as a "modern-day genre" (which is already a deeply awkward way to refer to the genre of a *1952* film—how can a film be in a genre that didn't exist? Confusing.). Google "bromantic comedy" => 108K hits (also, for the record, autocorrect made it "romantic" just now). Now google "bromance," an *actual* "modern-day genre," and you get 9 million hits. There's the difference: fake portmanteau v. real portmanteau. So …. yuck to the whole awkward mess of that answer and its clue. 3. theme answers are just trivia, who cares? 4. OMG the fill is superbad. Not the good kind of "superbad." The bad kind. OPES! ALINED! ANIS APER A ON! A tent full of TAMERS! How many TAMERS!? MMCCC TAMERS! Can I get MMCCC AMENS? Thank you.


Further, ill-conceived grid construction leaves you with YODER, which is an Absurdity on a Tuesday. But the way the grid's built, you're locked into that Y---R sequence, and making an actual, viable, reasonably early-week answer out of Y---R is nigh on impossible. In fact, the whole thing is clearly too theme dense (what w/ the word ladder and all) for the constructor to smoothly handle. So it's a hot, rough mess. This thing just tries to do too much, and gets too cute, with a not-important old film, and so I didn't care. Killed it (just north of 3 minutes), but didn't care.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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