Notable voyager of 1497 / FRI 8-21-20 / landmark consecrated in 1561 / Imported European wheels / Suffering from desynchronosis

Constructor: Alex Eaton-Salners

Relative difficulty: Medium-Challenging (7-something) (all of the challenge was in that lower-middle section, under the so-called "dome")

THEME: sadly, yes — sigh ... I guess the black squares are supposed to represent a single ONION DOME, even though SAINT / BASIL'S CATHEDRAL in RED SQUARE has many such domes, and even though that black-square arrangement is a pretty poor approximation of an onion dome, frankly

Word of the Day: ERDOS (15A: Paul ___, pioneer in graph theory) —

Paul Erdős (Hungarian: Erdős Pál [ˈɛrdøːʃ ˈpaːl]; 26 March 1913 – 20 September 1996) was a renowned Hungarian mathematician. He was one of the most prolific mathematicians and producers of mathematical conjectures of the 20th century. He was known both for his social practice of mathematics (he engaged more than 500 collaborators) and for his eccentric lifestyle (Time magazine called him The Oddball's Oddball). He devoted his waking hours to mathematics, even into his later years—indeed, his death came only hours after he solved a geometry problem at a conference in Warsaw. [...] Other idiosyncratic elements of Erdős's vocabulary include:

• Children were referred to as "epsilons" (because in mathematics, particularly calculus, an arbitrarily small positive quantity is commonly denoted by the Greek letter (ε)).
• Women were "bosses" who "captured" men as "slaves" by marrying them. Divorced men were "liberated". (wikipedia)

• • •

I'm never going to like themes on Friday or Saturday. Well, maybe not never, but you're gonna have to do way, way better than this random trivia test w/ terrible "picture." The theme stuff itself wasn't that hard to pick up, but because it was so cut off from the rest of the grid, the stuff under the "dome" was brutal for me—like a stand-alone puzzle that was way harder than any of the rest of it (probably because the other sections have easy-to-get theme material running through them, whereas there's zero theme material in the "dome" area). But back to the theme: don't care. You deprived me of the joy I get from the zippiest puzzle day of the week with this half-assed architectural nonsense. "Consecrated in 1561," Who Cares? It's not even a proper anniversary puzzle. We have ONION DOMEs all over town, as there are a lot of Eastern Orthodox churches around Binghamton. The black squares in this puzzle don't really capture the contours of the ONION DOME very well. I feel like some alien, or one of the Teletubbies, is looking at me when I look at this puzzle. Self-indulgent nonsense. Pass.

The fill was OK, though I didn't know a bunch of the names. CABOT is a name I only kinda sorta recognize as an explorer (1D: Notable voyager of 1497). Looks like he made it to Newfoundland. Good for him. Also, that ERDOS guy, that's a name I know exclusively because of crosswords, and even then I barely know it. Math guys think other math guys are more famous than they are. I had never heard of EULER before crosswords either, but at least he seems truly worth knowing. ERDOS is math-name crosswordese. ELENA, also crosswordese, and I totally forgot she was a Disney princess. Gross to see DHS here (Department of Homeland Security)—you rarely see it in xwords, which is great, since it's terrible and should be dissolved; and double-gross to see NOT PC, which, again, if you still have crap like NOT PC or UNPC in your wordlists, what are you doing? If you're "insensitive," you're "insensitive," not NOT PC. NOT PC is the language you use when you don't actually believe you were "insensitive" at all. Only total *********s use that kind of language. Shove it. NOT PC is disavowing language. It's "I'm sorry you were offended" language. It's trollspeak. It sucks. 

I had DEM before GOV (57A: Cuomo, for one) and AGE before GPA (41D: N.C.A.A. eligibility consideration), both of which made the under-the-"dome" part additionally hard. No way I could see KITCHEN from just the -CHEN with 49A: Island locale as the clue. Clue needs a "perhaps." Lots of (most) KITCHENs do not have islands, ugh. Why can't you just make a fun, bouncy Friday themeless. Other people seem capable. It's mysterious. This showy crap is for the birds when the "show" is not impressive (as it usually is not). If you're gonna get cute, make sure you stick the landing. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. Hey, Tommy Benfey. Yes, you, Princeton. Erin asked me to wish you happy birthday yesterday but I totally bricked it because I have quarantine brain. Anyway, happy birthday, thanks for reading, and, I dunno, maybe do something special for Erin. She seems nice.

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