Jewish month of 30 days / THU 9-10-20 / What every infinitive in Esperanto ends with / David Lynch's first feature-length film / Loser to Wilson in 1912 / Vocal opponent of 2001's Patriot Act for short

Constructor: David J. Kahn

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium (low 5s, first thing in the a.m.)

THEME: a bunch of BEETHOVEN stuff (in honor, I assume, of his 250th birthday, which is this year) — you've got his name and then a bunch of longer answers that have nothing to do with him, but which contain, in non-consecutive circles, the nicknames of three of his symphonies, which are, we are told, SYMPHONIC, and then you've got the opening eight notes of his 5th symphony, appearing in letter form, with one of those notes being a rebus because you have to put the full name of the note in the box and that note is E FLAT (inside DEFLATED) (4D: Released air from, as a balloon). So GGG[EFLAT]! FFFD! (13A: With 70-Across, dramatic opening of 62-Across's Fifth)

Symphony name-containing answers:

• PUERTO RICAN (30A: Ricky Martin, e.g. [Third]) (3rd = "Eroica"
• SPANISH TUTORIAL (39A: Exercise before a trip to Latin America, say [Sixth]) (6th = the PASTORAL symphony)
• SCHOOL RALLY (48A: Event before a college football game [Ninth]) (9th = the CHORAL symphony)

Word of the Day: SHEBAT (23A: Jewish month of 30 days) —

Shevat (Hebrew: שְׁבָט, Standard Šəvat Tiberian Šəḇāṭ ; from Akkadian Šabātu) is the fifth month of the civil year starting in Tishre (or Tishri) and the eleventh month of the ecclesiastical year on the Hebrew calendar starting in Nisan. It is a winter month of 30 days. Shevat usually occurs in January–February on the Gregorian calendar. The name of the month was taken from the Akkadian language during the Babylonian Captivity. The assumed Akkadian origin of the month is Šabātu meaning strike that refers to the heavy rains of the season. In Jewish sources the month is first mentioned by this name in the bible book of prophet Zechariah (Zechariah 1). (wikipedia)

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This feels like one of those rushed tribute puzzles you sometimes see shortly after a famous person dies, only in this case the famous person has been dead for going on two centuries, so why this should be so conceptually ragged, I don't know. This here is the (everything but the) kitchen-sink approach to making a tribute puzzle, which is, in the absence of a core concept, you just throw as much different kinds of junk in there as possible. And I love Beethoven. It would be weird not to. Just this week I've listened to "Eroica," Piano Sonata No. 21 ("Waldstein"), and the Violin Concerto in D major (Op. 61). So insofar as I have Beethoven dancing around my head right now, I can say this puzzle was enjoyable. But as a puzzle, it was a bit of a mess. The very cutest thing about it was the "opening notes of the 5th" gimmick, which felt original and creative (even though I didn't know the exact notes and had to get them from crosses ... I could infer that the first three of each four-note set were the same note, but what that note was, shrug). 

And then there's the little rebus twist with E FLAT going in one square. Clever. Also, potentially destructive, as people won't be looking for a rebus and will possibly rationalize some other answer for DEFLATED. I myself had an error in that square because of dumb morning brain. I got the gimmick, but instead of writing in the E (which the software will accept for the full EFLAT—it generally accepts just the first letters of rebus elements), I wrote in "F"—you know, for FLAT ... wah wah wah WAH. My brain somehow accepted "D" FLATED as a correct rendering of 4D. Ha. Anyway, as I say, that part was original and interesting. But the non-consecutive squares garbage, wow. And two of those answers just felt awkward: forced on the one hand (SPANISH TUTORIAL???) and dated weirdly phrased on the other (SCHOOL RALLY). "Hiding" a name in non-consecutive squares never ever ever feels like an accomplishment. It just looks a mess. And then there's the very sad SYMPHONIC, an adjective, which is here instead of the much more appropriate noun (singular or plural) entirely because of reasons of symmetry, i.e. neither SYMPHONY nor SYMPHONIES has the same number of letters as BEETHOVEN. So we get SYMPHONIC. Not the things themselves, but the word describing those things. Sigh. 

The fill is largely OK, though it also feels pretty old in its general orientation, and there are some Rough patches. UNPILE???? And that ... is somehow related to "disentangling?" (31D: Disentangle, in a way). Have you ever used the word UNPILE in your life? No, really? Maybe there's some niche activity where that's a thing, but if something is in a pile, and I take it out of a pile, I would never say, for instance, "I'll be there in one moment, I'm just unpiling my laundry!" I actually had UNPOLE at one point before I noticed that TOS didn't work for 44A: "___ So Sweet to Trust in Jesus" (hymn). That "X" in the SW is total Scrabble-f***ing, as XED isn't good fill so what are you even doing??? Just put two solid real words in there, no one cares about your "X." No idea what NEOcortex is, but that was easy enough to infer (34D: Prefix with cortex). No idea about SHEBAT either (23A: Jewish month of 30 days). I'm familiar with SHABBAT, but not the month SHEBAT. And it's a variant spelling ... not that the non-variant spelling would've been easier. That answer took every cross. No other real problems, though. I'm fluent in crosswordese, so the fill was not tough (OGEE! OGLE! INRE!), and as I say, I'm a BEETHOVEN fan, so the theme stuff was largely a cakewalk. 

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

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