Moorish castle / FRI 5-19-17 / Bratty girl on Little House on Prairie / Savory Indian appetizer / French filmdom / Port whistler / Classic arcade game with a glass backboard that shatters / Large WW II area / Ponytail's hipster cousin per GQ / Commander during John Brown's capture in 1859 / Half spoken half sung

Constructor: Matthew Sewell

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: ALCÁZAR (1D: Moorish castle) —

An alcázar (pronunciation: /ˈæl kəˌzɑːr/) is a type of Moorish castle or palace in Spain and Portugal built during Muslim rule, although some were founded by Christians and others were built on earlier Roman or Visigothic fortifications. Most of the alcázars were built between the 8th and 15th centuries. Many cities in Spain have an alcázar. The term is sometimes used as a synonym for "castillo" or castle; palaces or forts built by Christian rulers were also often called alcázars. (wikipedia)

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Fridays are my best chance to catch an enjoyable puzzle in any given week, and this one worked just fine. About where an average Friday should be. Varied, semi-tough, and armed with at least a few original- / fresh-seeming answers (today, e.g., KISSCAM and CRUSHING IT). This will do. It's a kind of palate cleanser. Light, refreshing. It's not totally filling, but (along with yesterday's decent offering), but it goes a long way toward getting the taste of the Sun-Wed junk out of my mouth. The most notable feature of this puzzle, from my perspective, was the uneven difficulty—specifically, the whole thing seemed phenomenally easy *except* the NW, which definitely made me work. And since I always start in the NW, I struggled early, and so the whole thing felt somewhat harder than it probably actually was. I couldn't do anything with 1A: Walk all over (ABUSE), or any of its crosses until finally I alighted on ECHO (after wondering, possibly aloud, why ALEXA wouldn't fit) (5D: Voice-activated Amazon device). From there it was ON BASE, MAN BUN, and off to the races. Once ENGAGEMENT PARTY dropped, I went down into the SE and up the east coast, no problem. Had some problems getting into the SW, but SAMOSA / CINE / SLEW ended up sliding in fairly easily, which left me, finally, with just that damn, pesky NW corner. Here is a red-line map of my trouble spots.

 [Had IN A SECOND at first—did you?]

So, yeah, the NW. If I've heard of ALCÁZARs before, I definitely forgot about them. Had the -GE at the end of 2D: Heavy rain and wanted only DELU(U?)GE. And then [Wrongly assumed] is just a brutal clue for USURPED. Not the meaning of "assumed" I was expecting. I ended up having to back into that area after getting the back ends of the long Acrosses. Not having any idea who Abby Sciuto is definitely hurt me at 8D: Org. for forensic specialist Abby Sciuto. I tend to think of NCIS as fictional (for obvious reasons) (see also JAG), and Abby Sciuto sounds like a name with wordplay involved. I keep saying it to myself expecting to find it's some kind of pun. Like "Abby Normal" or something. Anyway, NCIS is common enough in crosswords that I guessed it and then finally worked my way back to those first, vicious Downs. The end.

[Last Dance ... LAST CHANCE for love ...]

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Looking at my wife's puzzle now, I realize that I forgot what made getting USURPED especially hard to see—like my wife (right now, mid-solve), I spent a good part of my solve with ABASE at 1A: Walk all over. That is a perfectly reasonable answer. *BUT* ...  then for 3D: Wrongly assumed you get a word starting ASU- ... and your brain starts to catch and whirr and stutter and overheat trying to find an ASU- word ... *any* ASU word. The only ASU- word I could think of was ASU (as in Arizona State University). Maddening. So something must be wrong. But everything looks so right ...

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