Nine-fingered hobbit / WED 12-23-15 / Toy Story dog that shares its name with missile / French upper crust / Singer Williams of Temptations / Uncle on Duck Dynasty / Dios's enemy

Constructor: Jim Peredo

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: "GOD BLESS US EVERY ONE" —each word from this quote from "A CHRISTMAS CAROL" (36A: Novella whose final words are found in the circled squares) is embedded in its own theme answer. Speaker of the quote is TINY TIM (with "TIM" all "tiny" there in his own little square) (65A: Speaker of the words in the circled squares, expressed literally)

Theme answers:

• GODOT (13A: Samuel Beckett's "En attendant ___")
• NOBLESSE (22A: French upper crust)
• PUSSY GALORE (27A: "Goldfinger" temptress)
• THE VERY IDEA (44A: "Nonsense!")
• SKIN TONE (53A: Complexion)

Word of the Day: MONA Van Duyn (56D: Poet ___ Van Duyn) —

Mona Jane Van Duyn (May 9, 1921 – December 2, 2004) was an American poet. She won every major American award for poetry and was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1992. // Van Duyn won every major U.S. prize for poetry, including the National Book Award (1971) for To See, To Take, the Bollingen Prize (1971), the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize (1989), and the Pulitzer Prize (1991) for Near Changes. She was the U.S. Poet Laureate between 1992 and 1993. (wikipedia)

• • •

I was mostly indifferent to this puzzle until that TINY [TIM] moment. That made it all worth while. You've got a dense theme with a quotation *and* a work title *and* a speaker *and* a rebus square all going at once. Plus the fill's not bad overall. I didn't know OTIS or SCUD or MONA Van Duyn and I never would've guessed the plural UGHS, and I had NOBILITÉ at first instead of NOBLESSE. PLUS, I didn't pick up the battlefield context of 38D: Call preceding "Medic!" and I had NOUN instead of TOOL at 2D: Jack, hammer or jackhammer and then I got sidetracked for a moment wondering if the clue on UNCOOL was still correct (7D: Like wearing socks with sandals, say). If you were paying attention this past summer, you probably noticed teenage boys wearing dark socks with shorts, which used to be an UNCOOL old-man look, but apparently no longer. I would not be surprised if socks w/ sandals ended up on the "cool" side of the ledger sometime very soon. But back to my main point, which is I had all these moments of sputtering and stalling and *still* finished this one in the mid-low 3s (fast, for me, for Wednesday). I'd like to thank PUSSY GALORE. At least I assume that's how I got rocket-boosted through this grid.


One issue: the clue on TINY [TIM] (65A: Speaker of the words in the circled squares, expressed literally). It's not "expressed literally." It's redundant, literally. Expressed literally, there would simply be the "TIM" box, i.e. a tiny TIM. So ... phrasing. Everything would've been great if you'd just left the unnecessary "expressed literally" out of it. Just leave clue as is. It's great. We can find TIM. We can see he's "tiny." It's a great, great, unexpected little discovery awaiting us at the end of the puzzle. Don't overexplain, thus mucking things up. Just let it be, man.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. I constructed today's BuzzFeed crossword puzzle. Let's just say ... it stinks! (all short, punny reviews, welcome!!)

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