Portmanteau for lovers / FRI 2-2-18 / Long-running pop culture show / Robert who played filmdom's Mr. Chips / Laura of Star Wars last jedi / Pharmacy brand / Upscale kennels

Constructor: Randolph Ross

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME:  — none

Word of the Day: UNCAS (7D: Last of the Mohicans) —

The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757 (1826) is a historical novel by James Fenimore Cooper. // It is the second book of the Leatherstocking Tales pentalogy and the best known to contemporary audiences. The Pathfinder, published 14 years later in 1840, is its sequel. The Last of the Mohicans is set in 1757, during the French and Indian War (the Seven Years' War), when France and Great Britain battled for control of North America. During this war, both the French and the British used Native American allies, but the French were particularly dependent, as they were outnumbered in the Northeast frontier areas by the more numerous British colonists. // The novel is primarily set in the upper New York wilderness, detailing the transport of the two daughters of Colonel Munro, Alice and Cora, to a safe destination at Fort William Henry. Among the caravan guarding the women are the frontiersman Natty Bumppo, Major Duncan Heyward, and the Indians Chingachgook and Uncas, the former of whom is the novel's title character. [...]

• Chingachgook (usually pronounced chin-GATCH-gook): last chief of the Mohican tribe, escort to the Munro sisters. Father to Uncas, and after his death, the eponymous "Last of the Mohicans". His name was a Unami Delaware word meaning "Big Snake."^[6]
• Uncas – the son of Chingachgook and called by him "Last of the Mohicans", as there were no pure-blooded Mohican women for him to marry.^[7] He is also known as "Le Cerf Agile", the Bounding Elk. (wikipedia) (emph mine)

• • •

Er, no thanks. This is quite [Stale] and full of old / weak fill that could / should've been cleaned right up. There are some interesting answers here and there ("E! NEWS" and DOG SPAS, for two), but mainly it's a lot of AMALIE / TATAS / BIS / IED / ADOSE / UNCAS / etc. for very little payoff. Speaking of UNCAS (7D: Last of the Mohicans), I haven't read that novel in almost 30 years, but wikipedia is telling me that UNCAS dies before his dad and that even within the novel, Chingachgook (not UNCAS) is specifically referred to as the Last of the Mohicans. I think maybe Chingachgook calls UNCAS that before UNCAS dies, but ... I do not think the clue is technically accurate. You could lawyer it, but it's not good. And yet it appears to the best standard clue for UNCAS, so I have no idea what the hell is going on. Good luck getting CHINGACHGOOK into a grid. The JIVES clue was also off-seeming to me. I guess it's a verb here, and OK, you can "jive" someone in the sense of "taunt" them, but "gibe" is the far more common / better term for [Taunts] (both as verb and noun). From m-w.com, re: gibe / jibe / jive:

Here is your shorter holiday checklist for these three words:

• Gibe is almost always used to refer to taunts, or to the act of taunting. 
• Jibe may be also used to mean “to taunt,” but it is the only one of the three that should be used to mean “is in accord with” (as in “That doesn’t jibe with what I thought”). 
• Jive is the one of the three that should be used to indicate a manner of speech, or perhaps by swing dancers.

Though this one was mostly painful, it wasn't too far out of my wheelhouse. DONAT is olde-tymey, but I watch a lot of TCM, so no problem. I just learned ESTATE CAR the other day, from a crossword puzzle, so that was interesting, if not particularly pleasant. I had AGAVES before GUAVAS (11D: Sources of jam, jelly and juice) and SUM UP before RUN TO (16A: Total). SW corner was easily the toughest corner for me, as I couldn't remember what the word was that came before EYES with the marbles (39A: Some marbles => CAT'S EYES), and I thought ROGET's first name would be something French, and so it took a while to get any of the longer Downs there. SEXCAPADE might be an acceptable answer, but that clue, ew and yuck. "Lovers"? I mean ... what "lovers" are going to use that "portmanteau"? Precisely none of them. The very word "lovers" (meaning people who have sex) is so weirdly '70s. Virginia is for lovers. Portmanteaus are for lexicographers. I don't know who SEXCAPADEs are for. I feel like it's a thing one person does, over a series of days, with a series of people, in a Cinemax movie circa 1981.

Lastly, you can *shove* [Biased investigation] / WITCH HUNT right now. Shove. It.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

P.S. Happy birthday to my father, who is 77, and currently in India (?!)

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