Christian bracelet letters / SAT 4-25-20 / Relief pitcher of old / Parenting term popularized by Amy Chua in 2011 nonfiction bestseller / Big-pocketed character on old show / Regional specialty of southern Ohio

Constructor: Andrew Ries

Relative difficulty: Medium (7:46, first thing in the morning)

THEME: none

Word of the Day: DOTS (1D: Simple pencil-and-paper game) —

Dots and Boxes is a pencil-and-paper game for two players (sometimes more). It was first published in the 19th century by French mathematician Édouard Lucas, who called it la pipopipette. It has gone by many other names, including the game of dots, dot to dot grid, boxes, and pigs in a pen.

The game starts with an empty grid of dots. Usually two players take turns adding a single horizontal or vertical line between two unjoined adjacent dots. A player who completes the fourth side of a 1×1 box earns one point and takes another turn. (A point is typically recorded by placing a mark that identifies the player in the box, such as an initial.) The game ends when no more lines can be placed. The winner is the player with the most points. The board may be of any size grid. When short on time, or to learn the game, a 2×2 board (3×3 dots) is suitable. A 5×5 board, on the other hand, is good for experts. (wikipedia)

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Ordinary. Solid, with a smattering of newish / flashy answers, but heavy on the short stuff and thick with a crust of yore. AIKEN OREL OLAV TSLOT ULTIMO MOLTO ECO ILIE MERC ACERB CPO EKES ARNIE TIT ESTD ... and the clues skewed oldenish as well. Quaint and corny and bygone. In short, as I say, ordinary. This is what tickles somebody, clearly, but not me. Not much. But this is not to say that it's bad or poorly made; well, certainly not the latter. If I, or you, think it's bad, today that is much more a matter of taste than demonstrable structural deficiencies. But a puzzle loaded with short fill on a Saturday is bound to be dire. Making four-letter words Saturday-worthy usually involves doing sadistic / bizarre stuff to the clues. Who wants to slog through a small 6x4 section. The grid isn't really built for fun. The middle stack almost gets lost in the noise and chaos of the much-less-entertaining short stuff. Also, I just can't get excited about CINCINNATI CHILI, largely because I don't know what that is (10D: Regional specialty of southern Ohio). But even if I did, meh. Lots of real estate on something that, sure, exists, but has very little else to recommend it.

for after the chili

Even the newish stuff today felt stale. JUKEBOX MUSICALS and TIGER MOTHER and even STAIRMASTER would've been fresh close to a decade ago. They're fine now, but have about as much currency as CAPTAIN KANGAROO, which ... pockets? You're defining him by his pocket size? Weird. (3D: Big-pocketed character on an old show). I watched that dude when I was a kid and his pockets were nothing I took note of. I guess WEIRDBOWLCUT isn't really a strong standalone answer. I wouldn't mind seeing MRGREENJEANS in a puzzle. Anyway, my overall reaction to this puzzle is best exemplified by my reaction to 50A: Model company (CAR MAKER), which was "uh ... sure, I guess." That is, the fill wasn't terribly strong to begin with, and the clues were *trying* to jazz it up but in the end the ahas mostly ended up being ohs.

DOTS / DA CAPO / OREL made the NW a very tough start for me. I sadly got my first big boost from EKES (ugh), because the "K" helped me see DRAKE (35A: Spotify's most-streamed artist of the 2010s), which helped me clean up the mess I'd created in the west, where I'd gone IOTA / INRI / NET instead of WHIT / WWJD / WON. Oh, I should say that WWJD is interesting 4-letter fill (23D: Christian bracelet letters). I like it. What Would Jesus Do? Anyway, it beats the hell out of INRI, which I still don't really know the meaning of. Not many other real snags, once I got going. Had ASIS for PAID (26D: Red stamp word). Oh, and VAC / VOLTO (?) instead of MIC / MOLTO for a tiny bit (44A: Bit of A/V equipment / 44D: Very, musically). Speaking of MOLTO, you already exhausted your Italian musical notation at 1A. Going back to the well here is blecch. Honestly, I think the worst thing in this puzzle or any puzzle is ULTIMO, which has never been said by anyone anywhere ever ever and exists only to be in dictionaries and crossword puzzles. Not sure there's a greater gap between grid frequency of real-word frequency, considering real-world frequency is ~0. "Oh, hi Betty, I haven't seen you since ULTIMO, how are you?" [Betty pretends not to see you, scurries away to ogle lettuce]. /Scene

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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