Black tea variety / TUE 11-5-19 / "The Grapes of Wrath" migrator / Edwards or Ramstein: Abbr.

Constructor: John Guzzetta

Relative difficulty: Easy (3:53)

THEME: Juicy Part (64A: Movie role with range ... or what 17-, 24-, 39- and 51-Across each have?) — the shaded portions of the theme answers are various fruits, which typically bear juice

Word of the Day: PATINA (9D) —

Patina (/ˈpætɪnə/ or /pəˈtiːnə/) is a thin layer that variously forms on the surface of copper, brass, bronze and similar metals (tarnish produced by oxidation or other chemical processes), or certain stones, and wooden furniture (sheen produced by age, wear, and polishing), or any similar acquired change of a surface through age and exposure.

(Wikipedia) 

• • •

Theme answers:

• AUTOMATON (17-A): Robot
• ANKLE MONITOR (24-A): Object commonly worn by someone under house arrest
• LANDSCAPE ARTIST (39-A): One making a scene outdoors
• ROMAN GODDESS (51-A): Venus, for one

Hola, amigos. What's shakin'? Feels good to rap at ya. I'm first-time poster, long-time reader Adam Jacobi. Wish we could have met under better circumstances than "Rex Parker is in Michigan," but so it goes.

On to better news: this was a decent little Tuesday of a puzzle, wasn't it? Sturdy. The theme answers were all recognizable words/phrases on their own, the hidden elements spanned multiple words where possible—and in the first theme answer, it's one word, but the theme element used six of the nine letters, nice—and the fill was just plain clean. ABBA as your 1A isn't the best opening note in crossword history, but it crosses BUTT, so it's good to see the puzzle get a little... cheeky. Even better, the three-letter answers were sparse and common. Yes, there's some Crosswordese sprinkled throughout the puzzle, but 1) it's a Tuesday, and 2) if the furthest a puzzle strays from real words is SRA or BAA, that's not much to complain about, right?

So naturally, here's the part where I complain.

If I had a quibble on the theme, it's that when I think of common fruit juices, pear doesn't crack the top 10. Google tells me it's often for babies. Okay. It's not as flagrant as, say, the notion of banana juice, but apples and grapes are still out there, y'know? Especially considering it's in the one full-length theme answer. Obviously, this could come at the expense of the answer quality as a whole, and I'd probably rather see four quality answers that hide passable theme elements than four passable answers that hide quality theme elements, if that makes sense. Just not digging pear juice.

The puzzle plays pretty old. That's not a complaint, per se—there are people whose pop culture windows are all over the place who do these crosswords, and a Tuesday should be accessible to a very large portion of them. But I counted precisely six clues that would not have been solvable 25 years ago, and every single one of them—PIBB, YELP, STAN, DORA, JAKE, COP—could easily be re-clued back to the '70s without much difficulty. Move the window to "not solvable 30 years ago," and all you're adding is ROMA and OSLO; again, by themselves, still eminently recognizable. To reiterate, populating the grid with plain words is not necessarily a complaint, but it forces the clues to do a lot of heavy lifting to make up for unimaginative fill if the solving experience is going to be truly satisfying.

Bullets:

• 9A: ____ Xtra (soft drink) (PIBB) — At least the second Pibb shout-out in the last four weeks, and this one's "Pibb Xtra," a name Coca-Cola unleashed on the world to liven up the brand—and which now sounds far more hopelessly out of date than the preceding Mr. Pibb. Pibb Xtra! The soda that rides a skateboard! [guitar riff!] [always wear proper safety equipment when operating a skateboard or opening a soft drink can under parental supervision] 
• 26D: Bread baked in a tandoor (NAAN) — I once had visions of being a restaurateur, and my first pitch to investors was an Indian restaurant that served this bread before every meal. Unfortunately, it was a naan-starter.
• 36A: Greek H's (ETAS) — It's technically a word, but why not go with "Airport board listings, for short"? When was the last time you counted Greek letters or had to refer to multiple amounts of them? I feel secure in assuming that "There sure are a lot of etas in this Greek text!" is not a common observation to the majority of crossword solvers. It's okay to join the 20th century in your Tuesday clues. 
• 13A: Neighborhood neglected by local government (SLUM) — Honestly, I'm about ready for "slum" to be retired as a term—far too loaded, and you don't need me to explain more than that—but at least the clue is surprisingly responsible about its description.
• 11D: Advice often seen in Cosmopolitan and Seventeen (BEAUTY TIPS) — Got the first two letters on crosses and filled it with "BE YOURSELF" at first. Silly, precious me.

What did you think?

Signed, Adam Jacobi, Clown Prince of CrossWorld

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